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Garvie, Alfred Ernest, 


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The Christian doctrine of 


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THE CHRISTIAN. DOCTRINE 
OF THE GODHEAD 


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THE 





OF THE GODHEAD 
OR 
THE APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION 
AS THE CHRISTIAN CREED 


BY 


ALFRED E. GARVIE, M.A. (Oxon.), D.D. (Gras.) 


PRINCIPAL OF HACKNEY AND NEW COLLEGE, LONDON 





NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


TO THE SACRED MEMORY 
AND BLESSED PRESENCE 


OF 


A WIFE BELOVED 


Made and Printed in Great Britain. 
T. and A Constasve Lrp., Printers, Edinburgh. 


PREFACE 


Tuis volume is an attempt to express in the language 
of to-day the content of the Christian faith as the 
writer has apprehended it, not only by the study during 
many years of the relevant literature, especially ex- 
amination of and meditation on the Holy Scriptures, 
but also by personal experience of the truth and 
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, because he believes 
profoundly that pectus facit theologum. He has passed 
all he has read through his own mind, and has so assimi- 
lated all that was congenial to, and congruous with 
his own theological tendency and still more religious 
disposition, that it is impossible for him now to trace 
the varied content of his thought to its different 
sources. The references to literature given in notes 
represent a very small fraction of his indebtedness 
to other thinkers. He owes more than he can express 
to many minds; but he belongs to no school, and calls 
no man master; and he cherishes the hope that he 
may have something to say in his own way which he 
ean claim as his own contribution to the interpretation 
of the Christian faith to meet the needs of the present 
hour. He has not only read theologically but also 
lived religiously through the changes of the last forty 
years; and thus this volume represents not merely a 
doctrinal adventure, but a spiritual pilgrimage towards 
the Zion of Christian vision, in which many a valley 
of Baca has become a place of springs, and by God’s 
blessing strength has been added on to strength 
(Ps. Ixxxiv. 6-7). In the portions of this volume 
which deal with the teaching of the Holy Scriptures 


vi THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


the fewest references to other writers will be found, 
not because they have been ignored or neglected, 
but because the writer has done as much independent 
study of the sources, especially in the New Testament, 
as he could in the hope that as ‘a scribe, who hath 
been made a disciple to the Kingdom of heaven’ he 
may have brought out of this treasure some things 
new as well as the old (Matt. xii. 52). 


ALFRED E. GARVIE. 


Lonpon, 9th June 1925. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PAGE 


PREFACE : : ' : } V 
INTRODUCTION:: THROUGH FACT TO FAITH .._. 1 
Inrropuctory : The Predominance of Science To-day : 1 


I. Materiats AND Meruops or Srupy: 


(1) Religion and Contemporary eine 2 
(2) The Sacred Scriptures . 3 
(3) The Higher Criticism . ve ; : 4, 
(4) The ‘ Religious-Historical ’ Method ; ‘ a 
(5) The Judgments of Value. ‘ : 9 
(6) Judgments of Value and Judgments of Fact.” 10 
(7) The Venture and the Verification of Faith Ce oe 
matism) : : A - 12 


II. THe Mopern APoLocerics : 
(1) The Challenge of the Ideals, and the Responseof Fact 13 
(2) The Nature of the Facts needed . 14 
(3) The Immanent and the Transcendent Deity We 
(4) The Need of Facts for Faith: (i) Historical Truths 
and Truths of Reason; (ii) Expression of God in 
Man; (iii) Its Limitations; (iv) Its Supernatural 


Character; (v) The Principle of Kenosis ar 
(5) Christ as the Fact for Faith . : . rah! 
(6) Christian Experience as based on that Fact crit 4 


III. An ATTEMPT AT THE CoNSTRUCTIVE THEOLOGY : 
(1) Constructive Theology : @ Its Content; (ii) Its 


Srderic: 22 
(2) The Apostolic Benediction as the Framework of 
Constructive Theology . : : Nd Kee 
(3) The Formal and the Material Principle ; NN, 
(4) A Creed as a Benediction . } : BIA EAS 
SECTION I 
THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST’ 
CHAPTER I 


’THE EVANGELICAL TESTIMONY: (4) THE PERSON OF CHRIST 


IntropucTory : (i) The Synoptics; (ii) The Fourth Gospel . 29 
I. Tue Manuoop or Jesus. Introductory: (i) The Person 
and the Work; ce The Manhood and the God- 

hood ° . ; Fah eee 


vii 


viii THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


PAGE 
(1) The Liability to Temptation : (i) Temptation not Sin ; 
(ii) Possibility of Sin; (iii) Value of the Temptation 32 
(2) The Limitation of Knowledge: (i) Instances of 
Ignorance Confessed; (ii) Ignorance shared with 
Contemporaries; (iii) Insight and Foresight ; (iv) 
Knowledge of Fact and Insight into Truth: the 


Vision of Reality . : : , : mah, 
(3) The Subjection to Emotion: (i) Individual Emotions ; 
(ii) Vicarious Emotions. : 42 


Il. Tur Gopnoop or Jesus. Introductory : The Older Proofs : 
(i) The Pre-existence ; (ii) The Virgin-birth ; (iii) 
The Fulfilment of Law and Prophecy ; (iv) The Per- 
formance of Miracles . : } > 43 
(1) The Moral Character: (i) The Sinlessness and the 
Virgin-birth ; (ii) The Evidence of the Sinlessness ; 
(iii) The Perfection of the Character—Humuility, 
Sympathy or Compassion, Exaltation or Originality, 
Fidelity or Constancy . ; ; 45 
(2) The Religious Consciousness: (i) The Synoptic 
Evidence of the Sonship ; (ii) The Johannine Evi- 
dence of the Sonship ; (iii) The Johannine Evidence 
of Pre-existence . ; 53 
(8) The Mediatorial Sufficiency and Efficacy in revealing 


God and redeeming Man 56 
CHAPTER II 
THE EVANGELICAL TESTIMONY: (8) THE WORK OF CHRIST 
Inrropucrory : The Person and the Work : , ; 59 
(1) The Teacher: (i) Impression made on Hearers ; (ii) 
The Content... ; , , 59 
(2) The Example : (i) The Efficacy of the Example ; (ii) 
The Value of the Miracles ; 68 
(3) The Saviourhood : (i) The Messiah; (ii) The Son of 
Man ; (iii) The Servant of Yahveh ; 77 
(4) The Lordship: The Resurrection. 87 
CHAPTER III 
THE APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE AND INTERPRETATION 
I. Tur Pautine Tueotoey : Introductory : Two Errors to be 
avoided : 
(1) Paul’s Personal Communion with the Risen Lord : (i) 
Distinctive Features; (ii) Essential Facts ; (iii) 
This Experience as Faith-Mysticism 94 
(2) His Theology as an Interpretation of his Experience . 96 


(3) His Christology : (i) The Lordship of Christ as sub- 
ordinate to God the Father; (ii) The Relation of 


CONTENTS 


Christ to God and the World ; (iii) The Kenosis ; (iv) 
The Significance of the Earthly Life of Jesus 

(4) His Soteriology : (i) The Righteousness of God ; (ii) 
The Propitiation in the Blood of Christ; (iii) The 
Legal and the Ritual Associations ; (iv) The Blood- 
shedding and the Blood-sprinkling ; (v) The Re- 
conciliation with God ; (vi) the Redemption of Man 
from the Wrath of God, Death as the Penalty of Sin, 
the Bondage of the Flesh, the Law ; (vii) The Per- 
manent Elements of Paul’s Thought 

II. Toe JouannineE THEOLOGY : 

(1) The Characteristics of Jesus as presented in the 
Fourth Gospel : (i) His Certainty of His Relation to 
God as Father ; (ii) His Assurance of satisfying all 
Human Needs; (ili) His Intimacy of Relation with 
His Disciples ; (iv) The Necessity of His Death; (v) 
The Resurrection and the Holy Spirit; (vi) The 
Advance of Thought beyond the Common Tradition ; 
(vii) The Teaching peculiar to the Fourth Gospel 

(2) The Theological Explanations in the Fourth Gospel : 
(i) Various Comments; (ii) Logos Doctrine ; (iii) The 
Epistle to the Hebrews as complementary to the 
Fourth Gospel 


CHAPTER IV 


THE DOGMATIC FORMULATION REGARDING THE 
PERSON OF CHRIST 


InrropuctTory : (i) The Separation of the two Doctrines; (ii) The 
Greek and the Latin Mind; aan The Catholic and 
the Protestant Type 

I. Tur FormMvuLaTIonN IN THE CREEDS : 
(1) Historical Summary * (i) The Nicene Creed; (ii) The 
‘so-called ’ Nicene Creed; (iii) The Chalcedonian 
Creed; (iv) The Athanasian Creed 
(2) The Creeds and Personal Faith : (i) The Contents of 
the Creeds ; (ii) The Vital Interest of Faith in the 
Divinity of Christ ; (iii) The Vital Interest of Faith 
in the Completeness of the Sarre eh and the 
Unity of the Person ’ ? 
(3) The Creeds and Historical Fact 
(4) The Creeds and the Metaphysical Formulae : (i) The 
most crucial Terms and Phrases; (ii) The Use of 
the Term dvovs ; (iii) The Four Adverbs ; (iv) The 
Terms for Person; (v) The use of Terms in the 
Doctrine of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ 
I]. Tue Mopirications 1v THE LUTHERAN AND REFORMED 
ORTHODOXY : 
(1) The Difference of the Lutheran and the Reformed 


1X 


PAGE 


Q7 


104 


112 


115 


120 


123 


127 
129 


130 


x THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Positions : (i) General Differences ; (ii) Doctrine of 
the Lord’s Supper _.. 

(2) The Lutheran Christology : (i) The Br entz- Chemnitz 
Controversy; (ii) The Tiibingen-Giessen Contro- 
versy ; (iii) Comments 

(3) The Reformed Christology : (i) Calvin on the Doctrine 
of the Trinity ; HH The Admonitio Christiana ; un 
Comments 

IJ. Tue Kenoric THEORIES : 

(1) The General Purpose and Character 

(2) The Problems involved . 

(3) Objections to the Solution 


CHAPTER V 


THE DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT REGARDING THE 
WORK OF CHRIST 


Inrropuctory: (i) The Ancient Conception of Salvation; (ii) The 
Restriction of the Scope of the Work of Christ : (iii) 
The Conditions of the Doctrinal Development; (iv) 
The Spirit and the Purpose of the Discussion . 4 

(1) Christ’s Death as a Ransom to the Devil: (i) The 
Contacts with the New Testament; (ii) The Modifica- 
tions of Pagan Belief; (iii) The History of the Theory ; 
(iv) The Estimate of the Theory . ; 

(2) Christ’s Death as Satisfaction to God's Honour : (i) 
Statement of the Argument of Cur Deus Homo ; 
(ii) Criticism of the Argument; (iii) Denney’s 
Estimate 

(3) Christ’s Death as an Expression of God’s Love : (i) 
Abilard’s View ; (ii) Criticism of the View 

(4) Christ’s Death as owing its Value to God’s Acceptance 
(Duns Scotus) 

(5) Christ’s Death as Vicarious Endurance of Penalty : 
(i) Luther’s a eaerns (ii) Calvin’s Doctrine ; (iii) 
Criticism . : 

(6) Christ’s Death as a ‘ ‘Penal Example’: : (i) The Creed of 
Arminianism ; (ii) The Governmental or Rectoral 
Theory ; (iii) Criticism 

(7) Christ’s Death as Satisfaction through His Sympathy 
with God and Man in His Sacrifice: (i) Jonathan 
Edwards on Satisfaction ; (ii) Merits of his Treat- 
ment. 

(8) Christ’s Life and Death as ‘Sample ’ of Redemption : 
(i) Schleiermacher’s Teaching; (ii) Other Similar 
Tendencies 

(9) Christ’s Death as an Expiatory Confession of Sins 
on behalf of Humanity: (i) M‘Leod aie va S 
Theory ; (ii) Estimate of the Theory ‘ 


PAGE 


136 


1384 


142 


146 
147 
148 


150 


153 


156 


161 


163 


164 


170 


17% 


172 


174 


CONTENTS 


(10) Christ's Death as the Seal of His Fidelity to His 
Vocation as the Founder of the Kingdom of God : 
(i) Ritschl’s Modification of the Doctrine of the three 
Offices ; (ii) His view of the Relation of the Forgive- 
ness of Sin to the Work of Christ ; (iii) Estimate of 
this View . : 

(11) Christ’s Death as ; Love’s Vicarious Sacrifice : (i) 
Denney on Schleiermacher, M‘Leod rast eat, and 
Ritschl ; (ii) Denney’s own Statement . 


CHAPTER VI 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT ON THE PERSON AND 
WORK OF CHRIST 


IntropuctTory: (i) The Advantage of the Modern Biblical Position; 
(ii) The Advantage of the Modern Philosophical 
Position ; (iii) The Theistic Assumptions: (iv) The 
Treatment of the two Subjects as one; (v) The 
Categories to be employed 

(1) The Immanence of God : (i) The Tendency of Patristic 
Thought ; (ii) The Demand of Thought To-day 

(2) The Evolution of the Universe: (i) The two Concep- 
tions of Evolution ; (ii) The Kenoszs and the Plerosis 
in God 

(3) The Personality of Man: (i) Personality in Man; 
(ii) Objections to ascribing Personality to God met ; 
(iii) Divine and Human Personality in Christ ; @) 
The Progressive Incarnation 

(4) Incarnation and Revelation and Redemption 

(5) The Nature and the Effects of Sin: (i) The Nature ; ; 
(ii) The Effects 

(6) The Nature and the Effects of Forgiveness : (i) The 
Nature ; (ii) The Effects 

(7) The Sacrifice of Christ and the Forgiveness of Sin: 
(i) The Exegetical Question ; (ii) The Psychological 
Question ; (iii) The Theological Question 

(8) The Presence of Christ in His ath to eobiSe His 
Work in Man ! , ; 


SECTION II 
THE LOVE OF GOD 


Inrropucrory : (i) Jesus as Revealer of God ; (ii) Mistakes of 
Theology in the Past; (iii) The Implicit Theology 
of Jesus; (iv) The Explicit Theology of the Apostles; 
(v) The Dangers of Literalism and Modernism 


x1 


PAGE 


176 


177 


182 


184; 


189 


191 
195 


196 


200 


204 


213 


216 


xii THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


CHAPTER I 
THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 


I. Tue Conception or Gop: 

(1) God as Personal 

(2) God as Transcendent and Immanent 

(3) The Dynamic and not Static View of God 

(4) The Modern Conception of the paisa of God 

(5) ‘ Ethical Monotheism ’ 

II. Tue Faruernoop or Gop: 

(1) The Fatherhood Permanent and Universal 

(2) The Love of God . 

(3) Communicative and Reproductive Perfection 

(4) God’s Forgiveness 

Il. Tue Dirricu,Ties oF THE ConcePrion : 

(1) Reason and Faith: (i) The Assurance Christ gives ; 
(ii) The two Objections—Man’s Relative mice 
cance and the Existence of Evil 

(2) God’s Almightiness and All-Goodness 

(3) The Opposition of Calvinism: (i) Exposition of the 
Calvinist View of Election ; (ii) The Pauline Argu- 
ment for Election; (iii) The Argument against 
Calvinism — Foreordination and Foreknowledge ; 
(iv) The Assurance of Faith in God’s Fatherhood 


CHAPTER II 
THE RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 


I. Creation, ConsERVATION, GOVERNMENT, PROVIDENCE : 
(1) The Relation of Theology to Science and Philosophy . 
(2) The Divine Attributes in relation to the World 
(3) The Divine Kenosts and Plerosis in Creation 
(4) Evolution as the Mode of Creation . 
(5) Conservation, Government, Providence 
(6) Errors regarding Providence : (i) Claim to a ‘ Private’ 
Providence ; (ii) Expectation of Miracles 
(7) Miracles in Relation to the Order of Nature 
(8) Two Questions: (i) Why is Evolution the Mode of 
Creation ? (ii) Has Time any Reality for God ? 
II. Tue Nature, DrevELOPpMENT AND Destiny or Man: 
(1) Biblical Anthropology and Psychology. 
(2) Man and the Lower Animals: (i) Resemblances and 
Differences ; (ii) Primitive Man; (iii) Human 
Progress 
(3) The Unity of the Human Race 
(4) Heredity, Environment, and Individuality : (i) Hered- 
ity ; (ii) Environment ; (iii) Individuality 


PAGE 


220 
221 
222 
223 
224: 


225 
227 
228 
229 


232 
234 


236 


24:4 
245 
246 
247 
249 


250 
251 


252 
255 
256 
259 


261 


CONTENTS 


(5) The Origin of the Soul: (i) Traducianism ; (ii) Theory 
of Pre-existence ; (iii) Creationism : 

(6) Human Personality: (i) Thought; (ii) Feeling ; 
(iii) Action; (iv) Society; (v) ena : 
(vi) Religion 

(7) Human and Divine Personality : 0 Man’s ; Greatness ; 
(ii) God’s Condescension 


CHAPTER III 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 


I. Puysica, Evin or Pain: 

(1) The Sufferings of Animals: (i) General Considera- 
tions ; (ii) Conclusion of Science . , 

(2) The Sufferings of Man: © Physical ; (ii) Social ; (iii) 
Individual ; 

(3) The Attitude necessary . 

II. Morar Evin or Sin: 

(1) Definitions : (i) The Two Standards of Judgment ; (ii) 
Blameworthiness and Guilt ; (iii) Sin as Conscious 
and Voluntary ; : 

(2) Theories of Origin: (i) The Old Testament and the 
Apocrypha; (ii) The New Testament ; (iii) Later 
Teaching ; (iv) Constructive Statement as regards 
the Child and the Race ; 

(3) God’s Permission and Tolerance of Sin: (i) Permission 
of the Possibility of Sin; (ii) Justification of that 
Permission ; (iii) Tolerance of Sin because of the 
Fulfilment of a Purpose of Redemption 


CHAPTER IV 
REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 


I, REVELATION : 
(1) The Presence of God in and with Man 
(2) The Progressiveness of God’s Revelation ; 
(3) The Media of Revelation : 0) Nature ; (ii) History ; 
(iii) Conscience . , ‘ 
(4) The ‘ Special ’ Revelation in the Hebrew Nation : 
(i) The Selection of the Nation; (ii) The Original 
Activity of God; (iii) The Providential Dealing of 
God ; (iv) The Personal Inspiration of the Prophets 
(5) The ‘ Special ’ Revelation in Christ and the Church . 
(6) The Inspiration of the Bible: (i) Mistaken Views ; 
(ii); The True View ; Sy The ee of Mistaken 
Views 


286 


296 


299 


312 


316 
317 


319 


324: 
330 


331 


xiv THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 
II. RepDEMPTION : 
(1) God as Redeemer : (i) Nature, History, Experience ; 
(ii) Christ’s Cross; (iii) All His Self-revelation ; 


(iv) His Eternal Nature 333 
(2) Redemption by Sacrifice : (i) The Pr eparatory Revela- 
tion; (ii) The Permanent Reality 335 


(3) The Continuance of the Redemptive Revelation : 
(i) The Contrast and the aera Eae : e) The 
Essential Character. 338 


SECTION III 
THE COMMUNITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 


INTRODUCTORY : 
(1) Importance and Neglect of the Doctrine . P ou) eee 
(2) The Course of the Discussion . : : . 3843 


CHAPTER I 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 


(1) The Old Testament Doctrine of the Spirit of God : 

(i) Soul and Spirit in Man; (ii) The Spirit of God ; 

(iii) The Spirit and the Word and God . 345 
(2) The New Testament Doctrine of the Holy Spirit : 

(i) The Synoptic Teaching ; (ii) The Johannine 

Teaching ; (iii) The Teaching in Acts; (iv) The 

Pauline Teaching ; (v) The Identification of Christ 

with the Holy Spirit Scott’ S, Denney’ s, and Rees’ 

View 349 
(3) eine Development of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit 

in the Church : (i) The Receding of the Doctrine ; (ii) 

Patristic Teaching; (iii) Teaching of the Creeds ; 

(iv) Eastern and Western Tendencies ; (v) Protest- 

ant Teaching. 363 
(4) Constructive Statement : (i) The Present Opportunity ; 

(ii) The Experimental Basis ; (iii) The Maintenance 

of the Distinction of the Spirit and the Risen Christ ; 

(iv) The Nature of the ee (v) The Functions of 

the Spirit . t : . 869 


CHAPTER II 
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 


(1) The Church as a Society: (i) The Unity (ii) ‘ The 
Community ofthe Spirit’; (iii) ‘ The Body of Christ’ ; 
(iv) The Ideal and the Actual ; (v) Inspiration and 
Organisation ; (vi) Catholic and Protestant Tend- 
ency ; (vii) The Recovery of Unity f a f° 


CONTENTS 


(2) The Functions of the Church: (i) The Church’s Com- 
mission; (ii) The Preaching of the Gospel; (iii) 
The Administration of the Sacraments; (iv) The 
Exercise of Discipline ‘ : ; 

(3) The Ministry of the Church: (i) The Historical 
Development ; (ii) The Constructive Doctrine 

(4) The Church and the Kingdom of God : (i) The ao 
of the Past ; (ii) The Duty of the Present 


CHAPTER III 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 


(1) The Dependence of the Christian Life on the Christian 
pociety. ))/, 

(2) The Need of Penitence : (i) Christianity as Redemp- 
tive; (ii) Penitence produced by Love, and not Law; 
(iii) The Permanence of Penitence 

(3) The Power of Faith: (i) Nature of Faith ; (ii) Humil- 
ity as its Necessary Accompaniment ; (iii) Prayer as 
its Necessary Expression 

(4) The Energy of Love : (i) Love to God as AMfotive arid 
Pattern; (ii) Love to Man as Forgiveness and 
Sacrifice ; (iii) Love as the Moral ee oe : ey) 
Love as the Social Bond 

(5) The Endurance of Hope 

(6) The Christian Life as the Work of the Spirit : (i) 
Regeneration and Sanctification; (ii) Life in the 
Spirit 

(7) The Pelagian and the Arminian Controversy : (i) 
The Issues involved ; (ji) The General Conclusion . 

(8) The Christian Life as Truth, Beauty, and Blessedness 


CHAPTER IV 
THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 


(1) Its Antecedents: (i) The Animistic Background ; 
(ii) The Individual and the National Hope in the Old 
Testament . : : ; 

(2) The Teaching of Jesus : : (i Personal Immortality ; 
(ii) The Kingdom of God ; (iii) Second Advent ; (iv) 
The Eager Expectation really fulfilled . : 

(3) The Teaching of the Apostles : (i) The Apostle Paul ; 
(ii) The Fourth Gospel 

(4) The Apocalyptic Hope: (i) Transformation of the 
Apocalyptic Hope ; (ii) Objections to this Trans- 
formation ; (iii) Plea for this ‘Transformation 


by 


PAGE 


387 


401 


406 


410 


411 


413 


417 
4.25 


4.26 


432 
435 


438 


44.0 


443 


4.45 


xvi THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(5) Individual Destiny: (i) The Doctrine of Eternal 
Punishment ; (ii) ‘The Theory of Conditional Im- 
mortality ; (iii) The Dogmatic Universalism ; (iv) 
Constructive Statement 

(6) The Relations of the Individual and the Universal 
Hope: (i) The Individual Participation; (ii) The 
Completing Triumph ; (iii) The Need of Restatement 


CONCLUSION 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY: FATHER, SON AND 
HOLY SPIRIT ONE GOD 


1. Tue Economic Triniry ONTOLOGICAL : 

(1) Religion and Reality. 
(2) Two Objections to the Objectivity of Faith: (i) 
Agnosticism ; (ii) Psychological Subjectivism 
(3) The Progressive Apprehension of the Reality in 

Religion: (i) New Testament ; (ii) Christian Church; 
(iii) Constructive Statement : j 
(4) The Ontological Inference 
Il. Tur Uniry or THE ONTOLOGICAL TRINITY : 

(1) Attempts to make the Doctrine intelligible: (i) 
Unity of Subject and Object; (ii) Unity of Tran- 
scendence and Immanence of God; (iii) Unity of 
esse, nosse, and velle (Augustine); (iv) Unity of 
amans, amatus, and amor mutuus (Augustine); (v) 
The Orthodox Formula; Three Persons in one Sub- 
stance 

(2) The Approach through Modern (i) Psychology ; (ii) 
Sociology . 

(3) The Application to the Doctrine of the Trinity : (i) 
God as Perfect Social Personality and Perfect 
Personal car e) God as Perfect ae Aah in 
ally ut 


PostTscrRIPT . 


InpEx: (i) General ; 
(ii) Scripture References i 


PAGE 


4.48 


458 


462 


463 


4.66 
A73 


473 
A476 


4:78 
482 


483 
491 


INTRODUCTION 
THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 


ATTENTION is fixed on, and interest is absorbed in the 
Social Problem to-day, and especially the economic 
aspects, as it is generally considered that economic 
conditions are the most potent factor in determin- 
ing social relations. The prominence of the economic 
aspect of the Social Problem, due to the importance 
of the economic conditions as affecting social rela- 
tions, can be accounted for by the startling changes 
in society brought about by what has without any 
exaggeration been called the Industrial Revolution 
of the last half of the eighteenth and the nineteenth 
century. The invention of ever more complicated 
machinery, the use of steam as motive power, the 
expansion of markets by geographical discovery, and 
the improvement of the means of transport in railways 
and steamships—these are but the most outstanding 
conditions of this industrial revolution, the most 
serious social consequence of which has been the 
change in the relations of Capital and Labour, em- 
ployer and employed. What in dealing with the 
Social Problem, however, is often ignored, is that 
these changes have been due to man’s increased power 
over physical forces because of his improved know- 
ledge of natural laws. Behind modern industry and 
commerce is modern science. Here there has been no 
less what may be described as a revolution. Not only 
are men of science discovering the secrets and disclos- 
ing the wonders of nature, but science is more widely 
diffused by means of books, magazines, and news- 
papers than it ever was. The common thought is 
being influenced by it in often unsuspected ways, and 
a habit of mind is being formed under its influence, 
A 


2 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


which is by no means confined to those who follow 
scientific pursuits. Ours is an age in which science 
is a dominant factor of thought and life; for if the 
theoretical conclusions modify the one, the practical 
applications affect the other. 


I 


(1) As religion is not a department of thought and 
life which can be separated from the rest, and culti- 
vated in independence, but a quality of all human 
activity, relating its manifold forms to that which is 
beyond nature, and above man himself, it is evident 
that religion cannot be unaffected by the predominant 
interests and tendencies of any age. Theology cannot 
talk about * philosophy and vain deceit’ (Col. ii. 8), 
and ‘ knowledge falsely so called’ (1 Tim. vi. 20) ; 
it must take account of and adapt its interpretation, 
commendation, and defence of the beliefs of religion 
to the current modes of thinking and speaking. While 
religion lives, moves, and has its being in the regions 
beyond and above the world, yet it is concerned with 
the relations of what is in the world with what is 
beyond and above. As a man thinks of nature and 
of himself so will he think of God. Even if he have 
an inheritance of belief from the past, and hold fast 
to it, he will not hold it, and cannot hold it as those 
did from whom he inherits. In the Old Testament 
there is the literature of a progressive revelation of 
God ; and even if the revelation in Christ be conceived 
as final, and if the progressive and the final revelation 
be enshrined in a permanent record, yet the way that 
record is understood and used will vary as human 
thought and life vary. ‘Jesus Christ is the same 
yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever’ (Heb. xiii. 8), 
and yet to-day we do not interpret Him as He was 
interpreted yesterday; and in the ‘for ever’ we hope 
that ‘ we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him even 
as He is’ (1 John iii. 2), that ‘ we who now know in 
part shall then know even as we are known’ (1 Cor. 
xi, 12). As there is individual development, so is 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 3 


there historical progress, and that progress is not in 
one part alone, but in all the inter-related parts of the 
whole of man’s activities, although the rate of pro- 
eress is by no means uniform. The religion of an age, 
because religion by its very character as relating man 
to eternal reality is conservative, cannot believe itself 
subject to change, may lag behind the morality and 
the science; but in the long run and on the big scale, 
it is proved that man moves, and moves as a whole. 
(2) Among the many departments of human in- 
~ quiry in which there was a very great increase of 
knowledge was that of the literature of religion. Not 
only were the sacred scriptures of the East translated 
into English, and studied as never before by scholars, 
but travellers, missionaries, and, in more recent years, 
anthropologists enlarged our knowledge of the re- 
ligious beliefs, rites, and customs of the tribes or 
races without any literature, and the archaeologists 
are literally unearthing the monuments of the religions: 
of ancient empires that now are dust. (Assyrian, 
Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian.) In the psychology of 
religion the endeavour is made to relate all this grow- 
ing knowledge to the human soul, its characteristic 
interests, aspirations, and purposes, and in the philo- 
sophy of religion to give to it its proper place in the 
thought and life of man, apprehending its meaning 
and appraising its worth.1 There are two general 
conclusions which emerge from all this research and 
study : (i) Religion is a necessary function of the nature 
of man. Unless Where he suppresses his impulses, he 
does relate himself to what is beyond nature, and 
above himself. (ii) The content of religion, in belief, 
rite, and custom, is always relative to the total condi- 
tions of thought and life. Although it be a relation 
to the eternal, it always assumes temporal forms ; 
although by it man may reach out to the infinite, it 
shares his finitude in its expression; although the 
object of belief and worship be God, God is appre- 
hended in the likeness of man. Human limitations 
1 See The Philosophy of Religion, by George Galloway; A Student's Philo- 
sophy of Religion, by W. K. Wright ; Philosophy and Religion, by H. Rashdall. 


4 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


and imperfections cleave to that aspiration and 
endeavour of man by which he seeks and strives to 
rise above himself. eae 

(3) Can this conclusion be maintained in regard to 
Christianity ? There are still those who seek to\ 
defend the verbal inspiration of the Bible, treating | 
it in all its parts as absolutely authoritative in morals | 
and religion, nay even, entirely inerrant in history / 
and science. Other religions make a similar claim 
for their sacred scriptures, as the Hindu for the 
Vedas, and the Moslem for the Koran. The Bible - 
does not. make any such claim for itself. Apostles _ 
and prophets do claim to speak the Word of the Lord : 
but nowhere is it claimed that the whole collection — 
of writings has been divinely dictated. A candid and | 
yet reverent study of the writings themselves compels 
the conclusion that, although the Bible is the literature 
of divine revelation, yet it is human literature, and 
must be studied as other literature is. The divine 
communication is affected by the limitations of the 
human channels. What the much-derided Higher 
Criticism * does is but to exercise a trained literary 
and historical judgment on these writings, to discover 
from their own evidence, and not to accept from any — 
traditions about them, how questions about date, 
authorship, occasion, purpose, literary character, and 
historical value are to be answered. The method of 
the Higher Criticism is accepted in this volume, as 
simply an extension with the necessary modifications 
in a new sphere of inquiry, of these methods of 
accurate observation, searching scrutiny, and tested 
generalisation, to which modern science owes its 
triumphs. With the conclusions of the Higher Criti- 
cism, which are now generally accepted, it is not at all 
necessary to deal in detail here, as such conclusions 
as are assumed in the subsequent discussion will be 
dealt with in their relevant connection. All that 


1 The Old Testament in the Jewish, Church, by W. Robertson Smith; The 
Oracles of God, by W. Sanday; The Bible, Its Origin and Nature, by Marcus 
Dods; Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament, by G. A. 
Smith ; A Guide tojBiblical Study, by A.S. Peake. 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 5 


need be stated in general terms now is this, that we 
cannot accept the Bible as a text-book of science, 
astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, or psycho- 
logy, as in all these departments the writers were 
limited to the knowledge of their own age and sur- 
roundings. Any discussion of the views of the writers 
on the questions with which science alone is competent 
to deal belongs to Biblical Theology, and has historical 
interest, and not theological authority. Constructive 
Christian theology is not concerned with what any 
of the writers say upon any of these subjects; still 
less is it the task of Christian apologetics to recognise 
a conflict between the science of the Bible and modern 
science, and to attempt a reconciliation of them. 

(a) In the historical narratives we must recognise 
that ancient methods differed from modern, and we 
are at liberty, and it is our duty, to test the trust- 
worthiness of every document, as to the sources on 
which it is based, how near to the events recorded 
are these sources, and how far the-historian is careful 
in his use of his sources. Thus most scholars would 
certainly prefer Samuel and Kings to Chronicles as 
a record of the past. Even in respect of the morals 
and the religion of the Old Testament we must 
recognise a progressive revelation of the nature and 
the purpose of God. The revelation of God is an 
education of man, for man’s receptivity conditions 
God’s communicativeness, and yet each human re- 
ception of a divine communication develops the 
receptivity. The light had to be tempered to the 
sight, but the sight grew with the giving of the light. 
Since God has not made man perfect, but only capable 
of growing into perfection in fellowship with Himself, 
there was no other way. The law of divorce was 
allowed for the hardness of men’s hearts (Matt. xix. 8). 
Jesus could not utter all the truth because the dis- 
ciples were not yet ready to receive it (John xvi. 12). 
We cannot claim finality for the doctrine or the 
practice recorded in the Old Testament. 

(6) The succession of the prophets developed under 
the guidance and guardianship of God’s Spirit that 


6 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


ethical monotheism which Christianity has inherited. 
Jesus the Christ our Lord was the consummation of 
that progressive revelation: He fulfilled law and 
prophecy by correcting their defects and by completing 
what had remained incomplete (see Matt. v. 17-48). 
As the revelation of the Son by the Father was under 
temporal and local conditions, else He would have 
been unintelligible and unpractical to His hearers, we 
must in His words, by moral and spiritual discernment, 
which is the gift of God’s Holy Spirit, distinguish the 
permanent and universal truth and the Jewish forms 
of thought and speech in which it was, and had to be 
expressed, although it must be added Jesus Himself 
in His moral conscience and religious consciousness 
transcended these limitations, and thus in Himself has 
significance and value for all lands in all ages. He has 
indeed the words of eternal life (John vi. 68) because He 
is the Truth of the eternal God ‘ embodied in a tale.’ 
(c) As regards the New Testament, its authority for 
us lies in the testimony it bears to, and the interpreta- 
tion it offers of the person and work of Christ. Its 
testimony is not due to any theoretical interest, 
biographical or historical, but to a practical need that 
men should so know Him as to find in Him the 
Saviour and the Lord. Its interpretation is not that 
of abstract philosophy or theology, but of a concrete 
experience of what He was and did as Saviour and 
Lord. The literary methods of the age were employed 
and the religious ideas of the surroundings had an 
influence; but there was such a guidance and guar- 
dianship by God’s Spirit that testimony and inter- 
pretation were then, are now, and still will be adequate 
to bring sinful men to the forgiving God by the true 
and living Way in the spirit of adoption. To some 
of these questions it will be necessary to return here- 
atter, but meanwhile enough has been said to indicate 
the standpoint of the writer in regard to the authority 
of the Holy Scriptures. The late Dr. Marcus Dods 
in answering a question at a conference said: ‘If 
you will follow the teaching of this book, it will 
infallibly lead you to God.’ It is with the Bible as 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH Cin 


the record of God’s approach and appeal to man in 
grace and man’s response in faith, in Jesus Christ, the 
Mediator between God and man, that this volume is 
solely concerned, and the writer finds nothing in the 
method of the Higher Criticism or its conclusions, 
generally accepted among scholars, to lower its value, 
or lessen its significance for that purpose. 

(4) In recent years there has been a further develop- 
ment in the method of study of the Bible. To the 
criticism of the sources of the Higher Criticism, the 
relugious-histortcal method has added two principles, 
correlation and comparison. Science seeks to cor- 
relate phenomena by the principle of causality, and 
by comparing them to illustrate the principle of 
uniformity; its task is to seek causes and laws. 
That these two principles are applicable in the sphere 
of human history must be fully conceded. Its course 
becomes much more intelligible as we can _ trace 
connections and resemblances in human activities. 
But there must be a limitation in the application to 
human history of these principles which does not 
obtain in regard to nature. Human personality is an 
incalculable and inexplicable factor: individuality, 
liberty, responsibility must be allowed for: the 
behaviour of men is not as uniform as the behaviour | 
of atoris;° and event cannot be linkéd to event’ as 
effect to cause, as rigidly as in natural processes. 
In human religion especially there enters a factor 
that baffles scientific manipulation. Man in fellow- 
ship and as fellow-worker with God cannot be included 
in the causalities and uniformities of nature. Even 
if we admitted that God’s activity in nature was 
rigidly fixed in the order of nature as science knows 
it, but it is by no means a necessity of rational thought 
that we should, yet in human history no such in- 
variability can be asserted. God’s action by His 
Spirit in His grace is selective of individuals and 
nations for different functions, so that we cannot 
affirm uniformity, especially of the great moral 
and religious personalities. God’s action in man, 


1 See the writer’s The Christian Certainty, chap. iil. 


8 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


supremely in those who are charged with a mission 
and message for Him, so increases the free capacity 
for action in fulfilment of His purpose, that we cannot 
assert that the causality of heredity, environment, 
and circumstance is the measure of their possible 
achievement. It is assuredly both interesting and 
rewarding to examine carefully how far Jesus was 
in His teaching dependent on Jewish apocalyptic, or 
Paul was in his doctrine of the sacraments affected 
by the mystery-religions, or John in his interpretation 
of Christ reproduced the speculations of Philo; but 
in this study we must not start with the assumption 
that dependence is to be made as complete as possible, 
and originality has, as far as can be, to be denied. 
Again, it is both interesting and rewarding to compare 
Jesus with Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, and to dis- 
cover the resemblances, the evidence that it is one 
human nature that is approaching the one divine 
reality ; but this comparison should not begin with, 
but, if it can, go on to the assertion that Jesus is 
only one of the world’s great teachers, so comparable 
with them, that the Church’s claims for Him are 
unjustified. Criticism, correlation, and comparison 
there must be, and it is the timidity of unbelief, and 
not the courage of faith, that would escape from the 
application of these tests to Christianity. But what 
we may insist on is that the tests shall be applied 
without prejudice or partiality, without any assump- 
tions as to the credibility of the witnesses, the ex- 
plicability of the events, or the originality of the 
persons before all the relevant data have been sub- 
jected to searching scrutiny; and the assumptions 
of unbelief have no less to be excluded than those of a 
faith that has not been fully tested. It is in this spirit 
of candour and sincerity that the writer desires to 
approach the treatment of his subject, confident as 
his Christian experience has made him that Christian- 
ity need not shun, but may seek the most searching 
scrutiny. |! 


* See The Originality of the Christian Message, by H. R. Mackintosh, and 
Living Religions of the East, by Sidney Cave. 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 9 


(5) 'The judgments which can be reached in regard 
to historical questions are at best probable and not 
certain, and from these judgments we cannot exclude 
the personal equation.!. They are not only judgments 
of fact, but also of value. While there are common 
grounds of judgment among scholars adequately 
equipped and properly trained, yet among these 
there will be differences of judgment regarding the 
trustworthiness of a literary source, and consequently 
its historical value. These differences may be due 
to unconscious bias, to untested assumptions. The 
philosophy of one scholar may involve a denial of the 
supernatural, of the possibility of a miracle in any 
sense; the philosophy of another may make him 
prepared to consider the evidence without any pre- 
judice; a third may even hold a philosophy that 
makes him ready to admit a miracle without much 
scrutiny. What seems to the writer to be the proper 
attitude is this: on the one hand, to admit the reality 
of the supernatural, the immanent relation of God 
to nature, and the possibility of miracle as an activity 
of God in nature which, as yet at least, appears in- 
explicable by physical forces and natural laws as we 
know them; and on the other hand, to assume that 
God will not in His activity depart from His usual 
mode and His usual means without adequate reason, 
and, accordingly, to examine very closely if the evi- 
dence for the manifestation of the supernatural in 
miracle is sufficient to convince. We must try to 
steer our course between the Scylla of a credulity 
which accepts any evidence, and the Charybdis of a 
scepticism which rejects all. Whether the nature of 
the miracle itself is such as we might expect God 
as our moral conscience and religious consciousness 
apprehends Him as being to perform, and whether 
the occasion for and the purpose of the miracle are 
such as to be congruous with that conception of 
God, are questions which only a judgment of value 
can answer. That an ass should rebuke a prophet 
(Num. xxii. 28), that an iron axe-head should swim 


1 See The Christian Certainty, chap. vi. 


10 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(2 Kings vi. 6), and that a fish should keep alive a 
prophet in its belly for three days (Jonah 1. 17), are 
assuredly incredible miracles for an intelligent faith, 
and the context offers no justification for them. But 
that He who as Son came to reveal the Father, and 
as Saviour to redeem men, should not only preach 
grace in the forgiveness of sins, but act that grace 
in healing the sick, and even restoring the dead, is an 
activity so congruous with the nature and the purpose 
of God that a faith which seeks to be reasonable may 
scrutinise the evidence without any bias against its 
trustworthiness, if such it appear. 

(6) This distinction between judgments of fact and 
judgments of value is one that deserves further con- 
sideration. (a) In the first place, a judgment of 
value is not a judgment about the unreal, the imagined, 
the invented. It is a judgment about reality; it 
assumes that the object exists, but what is affirmed 
in the judgment of value is affirmed, not on the ground 
of sensible evidence, or logical demonstration, or 
rational consistency, but on the ground of personal 
valuation—what the object means for the person who 
makes the judgment of value. (b) This ground cannot 
be in contradiction of these other grounds; it may be 
but their complement, giving just that personal con- 
firmation which may raise probability to certainty. 
While we may not be able to offer any sensible 
evidence of God’s existence, yet just as from the 
speech, and the looks, and the deeds of our fellow- 
men we infer that they exist as minds that think, 
hearts that feel, and wills that strive and achieve, so 
may we infer from the existence, order, and progress 
of the process of nature that wisdom, love, and power 
are in that process manifested. It may be possible 
to interpret the evidence otherwise, and to decline 
to draw the inference; and yet for most thinkers 
some form of theism has appeared a highly probable 
interpretation of and inference from the world as 


1 See The Ritschlian Theology, chap. vi.; Faith and Fact, by Edghill, 
chaps. v. and vi.; Ritschlianism, by Mozley, chap. v.; Facts and Values, 
by Halliday, chap. viii. 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 11 


sense presents it and the understanding explains it. 
(c) A philosophy may show that such a theism gives 
a rational consistency to all the data of human know- 
ledge such as no other conception can. The moral 
conscience, which by its very nature asserts the 
supremacy of the moral law, or the absoluteness of — 
the moral ideal, confirms this conclusion. And the 
religious consciousness brings its testimony to what 
faith in God has done in enriching experience, forming 
character, and solving the problems of the world and 
life. (d) Man has ideals of beauty, truth, holiness, and 
love, the complementary aspects of perfection, and 
is persuaded that in their realisation alone can be 
his blessedness.1. What faith does is to affirm in 
belief, trust, and submission, in the committal of the 
whole personality, that there is reality corresponding 
to these ideals in God; and that because God is, these 
ideals will be realised in man. ‘ Now faith is the 
giving substance to (vméoctacis) of things hoped for, 
the proving or test (€\eyyos) of things not seen’ 
(Heb. xi. 1). Because faith proves or tests the reality 
of God, it supports, underpins man’s hope of personal 
perfection, the realisation of his ideals. It is the 
judgment of value regarding these ideals, and the 
God who is their reality and assures man of his 
realisation of them, that gives faith a confirmation 
which in such matters sensible evidence, logical 
demonstration, and rational consistency cannot give. 
He who does not, or will not, appreciate these values 
cannot apprehend this assurance. ‘The secret of 
the Lord is with them that fear Him’ (Ps. xxv. 14). 
‘The pure in heart shall see God’ (Matt. v. 8). The 
judgment of value does not produce although it con- 
firms the faith. 

(e) We must affirm on the ground of religious history 
and experience that there is an immediate contact 
and an intimate communion of man with God. Many 
would call this mysttctsm,? and under cover of such a 


1 See Faith and its Psychology, by W. R. Inge. 
2 See Christian Mysticism, by W. R. Inge; Studies in Mystical Religion, by 
Rufus Jones; The Mystical Element in Religion, by Baron von Hiigel. 


12 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


meaning for the term justify many vagaries of thought 
and life which have been characteristic of men and 
women claiming to be in an exceptional measure at 
home, or even one, with God. But surely it is spiritual 
religion, and need not be described by a term that 
has misleading associations. A distinction made by 
Kucken may here be usefully mentioned.!_ There is 
what he calls universal religion, and there is char- 
acteristic religion. In universal religion the ideals 
lead men to assert spiritual reality ; it is characteristic 
religion which apprehends that reality as personal, 
as God. His general philosophical standpoint has a 
close likeness to the position here maintained. A 
man must develop the spiritual life in himself before 
he can be assured of not only the subjective spiritual 
reality in himself, but of such an objective spiritual 
reality as may in the language of religion be called 
God. 

(7) As the majority of men rely with greater con- 
fidence on sensible evidence and logical demonstration, 
as it requires some philosophical culture to apprehend 
the rational consistency of a system of thought, as 
the spiritual life needs nurture and exercise, which 
most men are not prepared to give, common thinking 
is largely determined by the first two modes of know- 
ing, and neglects the second two. With philosophical 
culture, and its value, if not to the Christian believer, 
yet to the Christian theologian, we are not meanwhile 
concerned, but only with religious faith. At first it 
must seem a bold venture ; but the judgment of value 
and the sense of the reality of God make it not a 
rash adventure. Its verification can come only in 
the course of time: the satisfaction which the re- 
ligious experience gives, and the power that comes out 
of it into the moral character and conduct, afford this 
verification. As the satisfaction is known only to 
him who has it, although it may be partially shown 
in his disposition, his joy in the Lord, for others the 


* Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion, p. 269 ; see Rudolf Eucken, his Philosophy 
and Influence, by Meyrick Booth; An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken’s 
Philosophy, by W. Tudor Jones. 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH | 13 


verification is most convincingly shown in what the 
man is made by his faith. Faith energises in love 
(Gal. v. 6), and is known by its fruits. This is the 
pragmatic test; the truth about God in Christ works 
in giving religious satisfaction and moral excellence. 
But it works because it is believed as truth, as the mind’s 
apprehension of ultimate reality. It can continue 
to work only as it is still regarded as truth. Let the 
suspicion enter that there is no God, or that God is 
not as He is for Christian faith in Christ, then the joy 
will be quenched and the power be lost.t An illusion, 
once discovered, only mocks the heart and weakens 
the will. The venture of faith, confirmed in the 
judgement of values, and verified in experience and 
character, may be enough for some minds, or even 
for one mind at some times. But even although 
faith be further supported by the theistic interpre- 
tation of the world, doubts, fears, and questions 
may arise. There is much in the world and life 
to challenge faith, even so confirmed, verified, and 
supported. , 


II 


(1) Over against the ideals of truth, holiness, and 
love, and the blessedness which their realisation would 
bring, there is falsehood, wickedness, hate, and con- 
sequent misery; over against the theistic interpreta- 
tion of nature there is pain, disease, death. Can ideas 
so obscurely expressed in the world, and ideals so 
partially realised in man, maintain and assert them- 
selves in face of these facts of man’s experience ? 
Men to-day clamour for facts, and will not accept 
ideas or ideals unsupported by facts.2, Neither an 
idealism which asserts that the real is the rational, 
nor an optimism which declares that this is the best 
of all possible worlds, will by reasoning, however 
consistent and cogent logically it may appear, con- 
vince, if so many facts of experience challenge the 


1 See Wright’s A Student’s’ Philosophy of Religion, pp. 355-8. 
2 See The Fact of Christ, by P. Carnegie Simpson. 


14 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


argument, and may even in certain moods make 
materialism or pessimism appear just as plausible 
interpretations of things as they are. Faith for cer- _ 
tainty, confidence, constancy needs facts that sustain 
the argument and confute the challenge. 

(2) What facts can convince that ideals can be 
realised because God is reality? As these ideals 
must be realised in human history under the condi- 
tions of search, struggle, and suffering with the 
hindrance of falsehood, wretchedness, and hate ever 
to be overcome, God must be apprehended as present 
and active in history. The static deity of the philo- 
sopher who eternally contemplates his own perfection 
must give place to the dynamic deity who is temporally 
fulfillmg His purpose in and for men. It is not about 
the eternal nature of God that sinning, struggling, 
and suffering men are concerned; it is the temporal 
purpose of God, and His activity in time to fulfil it, 
that alone matter to them. Is He a fellow-sufferer 
with them? are they fellow-workers with Him ? 
Mr. Wells, in his book God the Invisible King, popular- 
ised a tendency in theology which is not recent, but 
may be said to be characteristic of the progressive 
thought of the nineteenth century, even as the 
conception of a God who holds aloof from men was 
characteristic of the eighteenth. While we must be 
on our guard against sweeping generalisations, and 
must admit that the thought of an age cannot be 
described in a phrase or term, yet it may be said with 
enough justification to make it worth saying that 
the tendency of the eighteenth century was deistic 
with an emphasis on God’s transcendence, and the 
tendency of the nineteenth century pantheistic with 
the stress on the immanence. The God of Mr. Wells’ 
thought is immanent in the world process, but not 
transcendent of it; above and beyond there is an 
inscrutable power, and God is saving Himself as well 
as men, and men may help Him in His struggle. 
Roman Catholic Modernism was based on a philosophy 
of immanence, and the far less significant and much 
more restricted New Theology undertook a restate- 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 15 


ment of the Gospel on the basis of the principle of 
the divine immanence.! 

This tendency in theology is an illustration of what | 
has already been insisted on, that religion cannot 
be severed from the whole of life. The hypothesis 
of evolution was the guiding principle of physical 
science last century; and a cosmic evolution, if it is 
to be interpreted theistically, demands not a tran- 
scendent static but an immanent dynamic God, a God 
who is present and active in His world. As nature 
and history are parts of the one process of evolution, 
creation is historical and history is creative. If the 
physical universe has reached a stage of relative 
permanence in respect of its recurring processes, 
mankind is still in the progressive stage, and God is 
making man in and through history. Culture, Art, 
Civilisation, Morals, Religion are all developing, and 
the individual man is within that development of 
the race, being himself developed towards personality. 
For man’s making or marring the temporal process 
is all-important, and God’s creative, educative, re- 
demptive activity must be in and by that process. 
History is no less if even not more important, there- 
fore, for theology than philosophy; for it is now 
concerned not with conceiving God’s eternal nature, 
but with perceiving His temporal purpose. Religion 
is not the flight of the alone to the Alone—that 
spiritual indulgence and luxury only a few may claim ; 
it is the discovery in the full stream of history of those 
divine currents that show the direction of the flow. 

(3) Religion, however, would deny its very nature, 
if it were to be ‘ cribb’d, cabin’d, and confined’ to 
the immanent deity. The divine purpose can give 
meaning and worth to the temporal process only 
as it expresses the nature and commands the resources 
of eternal reality. If God were immersed in history, 
He could not direct nor control its course. He must 


1 See Loisy, The Gospel and the Church; Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross 
Roads, and Through Scylla and Charybdis; The Programme of Modernism, 
translated from Italian by A. Leslie Lilley; and The New Theology, by the 
Rev. R. J. Campbell. ~ 


16 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


be above as well as in and through all to give to the 
soul of man the assurance that the purpose in the pro- 
cess will be fulfilled. A God bounded and hindered 
by an inscrutable power could not give the certainty 
that trial will end in triumph, and labour not be in 
vain. Unless God be ultimate reality, eternal, infinite, 
absolute, the reality of the ideals in Him would not 
guarantee their final realisation in men. Men need 
and want a Fellow-sufferer, whose compassion and con- 
solation belong to the very core of all reality, and a 
Fellow-worker, whose co-operation commands all the 
resources that will make all labour finally effective. 
(4) While it has been necessary to add this caution, 
as the present exaggeration of God’s immanence has 
its perils for thought and life, in the present context 
what it is crucial to the discussion to show is that for 
men, being made in history, God must there also be 
present and active. This thesis has been developed 
with much conviction by Herrmann in his pamphlet 
Warum bedurf unser Glaube geschichtlicher Thatsachen ? 
(What need has our faith of historical facts ?) What 
is there emphasised is this aspect of the subject. If 
men are in history to fulfil the eternal law of righteous- 
ness, they need events which will assure them that 
He who gives the law also so guides history that those 
who seek to fulfil that law will not perish but be 
preserved.' This moral emphasis must be primary, 
but need not be exclusive, as man needs for his whole 
personal development in time such an assurance of pro- 
tection and prevision for his good in the eternal God. © 
What is needed is a fact or facts in human history 
that will make men sure of God as willing their good, 
as strengthening them in their struggles, as sustaining 
them under their burdens, as securing that aspirations 
shall be fulfilled and ideals realised; and especially, 
as men know the greatest hindrance to be in them- 
selves, in their moral failure and weakness, they crave 
a God who forgives, renews, and saves. It is not 
speculative curiosity as to the ultimate cause, essential 
nature, and final purpose that is the dominant motive ; 


* See The Ritschlian Theology, pp. 218-19. 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 17 


it is practical necessity that man should be his best 
and make the best of his world, that drives faith to 
seek a strength and stay in fact. 

Christian faith affirms that this need is met in the 
fact of Christ. Some objections to this contention 
must be considered before we discuss the significance 
of the fact. 

(1) In the dominant philosophy of the eighteenth 
century, idea or ideal was exalted, and fact was 
depreciated. ‘ Historical truth, which 1s accidental 
in 1ts character, can never become the proof of the 
truths of reason, which are necessary.’ (Lessing.) 
Without committing ourselves to either all the con- 
clusions of physical science or all the speculations of 
idealist philosophy, we may appeal to both against 
this dogmatic assertion. Nature for science is not a 
fixed system, it is an evolving process, and the history 
of that process is significant for the interpretation of 
nature. The Universe is for idealism the realisation 
of an Idea or Spirit, and it is in the real that the 
rational is sought and found. The reason of man 
which discovers reason in reality is itself not static 
but dynamic. It develops with and by means of the 
reality it understands. Man grows in intelligence 
as his world becomes to him more intelligible. This 
development may be illustrated by the difference 
between deductive and inductive Logic; in the one 
the category of substance and accident, in the other 
that of causality is dominant. For Plato the world 
of sense obscured rather than revealed the world of 
ideas ; Hegel finds in the world not only the otherness 
of the Idea, but the return of the Idea to itself, 
enriched by that negation of itself, a synthesis which 
takes up into its fulness both the thesis and antithesis. 
It is not necessary here further to develop this line 
of argument, as what has been stated should suffice 
to show that for the thought of to-day that old 
objection has lost force. 

(11) The objection, however, may be modified and 
stated in this form. How can infinitude be expressed 
in finite existence, or eternity in a temporal process ? 

B 


is THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


It may be admitted that God in His absoluteness 
cannot be manifested in human history, that a human 
personality could not, consistently with the conditions 
of humanity, display omnipresence, omniscience, and 
omnipotence. But what man needs and longs for 
is not to discover God unto perfection, to fathom the 
abysmal depths of the divine, to resolve the mystery 
of God into a formula: man craves to be assured of 
God as present and active in the process of history 
for the common human good, God as not separated 
from man but as related to man, God so proved in 
the life of man as sharing man’s lot and caring for 
man’s welfare and succour that the God who is above 
and beyond shall be not an inscrutable mystery, or 
ineluctable fate, but One to be trusted, although He 
cannot be fully known. It is in the realm which is, 
so to speak, common to God and man as reasonable, 
moral, and spiritual, that man’s faith craves this 
confirmation of ideas and ideals by facts. God’s 
Fatherhood and man’s sonship means (in a theistic, 
not to anticipate now the Christian, interpretation) 
such affinity of God and man, making relation possible, 
and yet such difference as the terms themselves 
convey, within the relationship, that God is the 
perfect communicative personality and man the im- 
perfect receptive personality. 

(11) That the divine manifestation and communica- 
tion in fact to meet the human need and craving must 
be within the limits and under the conditions of 
human personality is a conclusion that this summary 
discussion seems to justify. This conclusion does 
not, however, involve that the human personality 
must be in all respects what we know in common 
experience as the average manhood of our fellows. 
It is not unreasonable to expect that the human 
development should be crowned by the realisation 
of the ideal manhood, the presence and activity in 
human history of the typical man, man as God meant 
him to be in the final fulfilment of His purpose, not 
as man by his sin has marred himself and become. 
A perfect man, perfectly receptive for God, would 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 19 


necessarily stand in another relation to the order of 
nature even than ordinary sinful men can stand. 
His insight into God’s purpose would give Him a 
control over nature’s forces in His dependence on, 
and obedience to God, such as we must ascribe to 
God, if we put any real meaning into our belief in 
God’s immanence, not passive, but active, in nature. 

(iv) The possibility of such a relation cannot on 
grounds of reason, then, be denied. It might seem 
rash to affirm the necessity that the facts which 
confirm faith should be supernatural or miraculous. 
That the miracles were Christ’s credentials, giving 
Him a claim to be believed, trusted, and obeyed, 
is a view now superseded. But that the miracles 
were constituents of His manifestation of God as 
forgiving grace and saving love may still be reason- 
ably maintained.t Whether His teaching by itself, 
unaccompanied by any of His healing acts, would 
have conveyed to men the assurance concerning the 
Heavenly Father that they needed is at least doubtful. 
That these acts were to men evidences not only of 
God’s presence with Him, but even of the redemptive 
character of God’s purpose, seems to be not at all 
doubtful. We may approach the record of the facts 
without any antecedent prejudice against super- 
natural activity or miraculous events. In view of 
our modern knowledge and thought we may be led 
in the fuller discussion of the subject to modify the 
current terminology, and define the supernatural and 
miracle otherwise than has hitherto been done. All 
that at this present stage needs affirming is that while 
the facts must be within human history, we are not 
warranted in demanding that they shall all be explic- 
able by ordinary human agency. The human person- 
ality receptive and communicative of God’s activity 
in history need not be an average man. 

(v) Ideal and typical as may be the human person- 
alitv in whom God manifests Himself, yet such 
manifestation does, and must, involve self-limitation 


1 See The Miraculous Element in the Gospels, by A. B. Bruce, chaps. vil. 
and yiil. 


290 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


on the part of God. But in this respect incarnation 
is the supreme instance of an activity of God which 
is illustrated by all creation; it is only by self- 
limitation that the Infinite can create within time 
and space a finite and changing world. Man’s 
personal liberty and responsibility still more involves 
God’s reserve and restraint in regard to the creatures 
whom He has made. The principle of kenosis, as 
theology calls it, is necessary for the interpretation 
of nature and history no less than of the fact of Christ. 

(5) Christ as Son realises manhood perfectly in 
relation to God, and in this realised Sonship as man 
He reveals the reality of God’s Fatherhood in relation 
to men. Not by words and deeds alone, but by all 
He was in relation to God, did He give the assurance 
of God’s Fatherhood, and man’s sonship towards 
God. And as He realised His Sonship and revealed 
God’s Fatherhood under those very conditions of 
struggle, sorrow, and suffering which challenge faith, 
and make facts necessary for the support and succour 
of faith, the challenge has in Him been fully met. 
Sinless through all temptation, trustful in all trial, 
He is not only Himself conqueror of the world, but 
He can and does, by drawing men unto Himself, bring 
them unto God in the same relationship as He Himself 
holds. As must afterwards be fully shown, it is in 
His Cross and His Resurrection especially that He 
gives men the confidence that sin is forgiven, death 
robbed of its terror, and that the victory over every 
challenge of fact is with faith in God. And not to 
His earthly life alone is this personal relation to Him 
confined, for in Christian experience throughout the 
centuries He ever liveth to save to the uttermost all 
who come unto God through Him (Heb. vii. 25). 

(6) The knowledge of God as Father which is 
mediated by Christ is neither intuttional, as a native 
endowment of the mind of man, nor inferential, as the 
conclusion of a process of reasoning, nor yet mystical 
as an immediate contact with God without any 
historical mediation, but experimental and practical. 
Salvation is experienced, not only in the religious 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 21 


consciousness, but also in the moral character; the 
man who through faith in the grace of Christ has 
found forgiveness is renewed unto holiness. This 
experience can be practically tested in what. the man 
becomes and does as well as the Joy, peace, and hope 
which come to him. ‘This witness is not in solitary 
individuals, but in a continuous and expansive society. 
Whenever and wherever men have put the fact of 
Christ to the test, He has not been found wanting. 
Such evidence can be confidently set against all the 
contradictions of the fact of Christ which modern 
knowledge and thought may offer. Except it be on 
the question of miracle, science, when it minds its own 
business and does not try to play the part of a philo- 
sophy of all reality, can have no quarrel with this 
fact, as has already been indicated in dealing with 
the Bible. And we shall afterwards show that even 
on the question of miracle, faith need not fear science. 
Philosophy as an interpretation of all reality is 
necessarily speculative in character, and cannot 
assert its conjectures against the testimony of faith 
for him who has known what faith has been to him, 
and done for him. If it ignores faith’s testimony, 
then it has wilfully neglected data of which it should 
take full account to justify a claim to completeness. 
If criticism could so discredit the literary sources of 
our knowledge of the fact of Christ, as to bring into 
doubt His historical reality, it would assuredly offer 
faith its most serious challenge. While there are 
tendencies in modern criticism of a negative character, 
they discredit themselves by their mutual contradic- 
tions. The total denial of the very existence of Jesus 
finds its opponents even among critics of negative 
tendency. The attempt to resolve the object of 
Christian faith into a myth has been rejected by the 
great majority of the critics. Although it may not 
be possible to say with Dr. Dale? that the evidence 
from experience would be adequate to support faith, 
even were all other historical evidence to fail, yet the 
existence of the Christian Church with its innumerable 


1 The Living Christ and the Four Gospels, Lecture I. 


22 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


witnesses to this Christian experience is a historical 
fact of such magnitude that faith need not fear 
literary or historical criticism. 


Til 


(1) If Christian faith be based on the fact of Christ, 
then Christian theology will be an exposition, com- 
mendation, and appreciation of the significance and 
value of that fact for faith. This will involve a 
considerable change both in the content of theology, 
and the order of the presentation of that content. 

(i) Much that has hitherto been included in theology 
when its content was derived both from the Bible and 
the Church will now be left to Biblical and Historical 
Theology, and Constructive Theology will confine 
itself to what constitutes the object of Christian faith. 
As has already been indicated, there is much in the 
science, the history, and even the religion and morals 
of the Old Testament which for the Christian believer 
has now historical interest, but not religious or moral 
authority. That historical interest is real, and he 
who wants to be an instructed and intelligent Christian 
will not be indifferent to any part of the literature 
of the progressive revelation of God which is completed 
in Jesus Christ. This consideration applies to the 
New Testament in so far as it reproduces the current 
knowledge and thought; but it is to a far greater 
extent dominated by the fact of Christ with which 
Christian faith is vitally concerned. There is in the 
Old Testament a preparation for Christ, and in the 
New Testament a testimony to the history of Christ, 
and an interpretation of that history through the 
experience of Christ—all of which belong, and must 
belong, to Christian theology. The fact of Christ has 
a twofold aspect, the revelation of God and the 
redemption of man, and this redemption of man and 
this revelation of God are mutually inclusive, for God 
is revealed as redeeming man, and man is redeemed 
by the revealing God. Thus in accordance with its 
name, theology should be only a doctrine of God; 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 23 


with all other doctrines which systematic theology 
has added to the doctrine of God, and given imposing 
names (anthropology, ponerology or hamartiology, 
Christology, soteriology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, 
and eschatology), it is concerned only as dealing with 
the content of God’s redemptive revelation in Christ. 
To give an instance, theology is concerned with man 
as God’s creature, subject, and child, and with sin 
as so affecting man’s relation to God that redemption 
is necessary. The writer will at least make the 
attempt to justify his growing conviction that this, 
and this only, is the proper business of Constructive 
Christian Theology. This simplification will, in his 
judgment, be a great gain, as it will confine theology 
to ‘ the things most surely believed,’ to what a believer 
must hold if the fact of Christ is to have full meaning 
and worth for him. 

(11) Text-books of Christian dogmatics have usually 
followed what appeared to be the logical order; and 
Dr. Orr in his book, The Progress of Dogma, has sought 
to prove the necessity of that order by showing its 
correspondence with the providentially guided develop- 
ment of dogma in the Church. A detailed criticism 
of this book cannot be offered ; all that the writer can 
now urge is that the correspondence is not so close as 
Dr. Orr, by a rather arbitary handling of historical 
data, makes it appear, and that historical conditions 
so fully explain why certain questions emerged for 
discussion at a particular time, that it does not seem 
necessary, and appears even a little audacious to 
assume a special providential guidance of the order. 
Further, as the emphasis of the treatment in the 
present volume falls on facts, a historical order is 
more appropriate than a logical. There are pre- 
suppositions of the fact of Christ, as He came in the 
fulness of the times, and fulfilled law and prophecy, 
and these presuppositions will emerge in the discussion 
of the content of the fact. There are interpretations 
of the fact of Christ which as experimental and 
practical may be included in the fact, the total 
historical reality which we seek to understand, 


24 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


There are inferences which may legitimately be 
drawn from the fact of Christ, both theoretical and 
practical, and for them also a place may be found. 
The fact includes a revelation of God, and accordingly 
there is a doctrine of God which is attached to the 
exposition of what the historical personality was. 
The fact also includes a redemption of man, and, 
therefore, there is a doctrine of the new life for man 
which comes through Christ, the life in the Spirit of 
God. Thus there is indicated for us not only what must 
be the content of our Constructive Theology, but also 
the order in which that content should be developed. 
(2) For this view of the content and order of 
Christian theology, two facts in the New Testament 
are significant. Christian baptism was in the earliest 
days of the Church in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 
ili. 88) or the Lord Jesus (xix. 5); but later it was 
‘into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost ’ (Matt. xxviil.19). The eternal reality 
antecedent to, and the personal and corporate ex- 
perience consequent on the fact of Christ are now 
associated with that fact. In the closing benediction 
in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Galatians, and 1 Corinthians, 
Paul mentions only ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus 
Christ,’ but in 2 Corinthians there is added ‘ the love 
of God . . . and the communion of the Holy Ghost,’ 
the reason for and the result of the fact. Later creeds 
follow this precedent in having three parts, but depart 
from it in placing the section dealing with God the 
Father before that dealing with the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and in the section dealing with the Holy Spirit are 
included a number of clauses not formally linked 
with the Holy Spirit as the source of the Church, the 
communion of saints, and the life everlasting, although 
that may be implied. In accordance with the general 
principle enunciated in the previous discussion, the 
order of the apostolic benediction will be followed, 
and the three divisions will be entitled by the phrases 
of the apostolic benediction. First of all the his- 


* An interesting justification of the order here adopted is afforded by 
M‘Giffert’s book, The God of the Early Christians, in which he seeks to 


THROUGH FACT TO FAITH 25 


torical personality of the Lord Jesus Christ will be 
discussed under the title which will indicate the 
dominating conception, ‘ the grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ.’ Next the doctrine of God as revealed in 
Christ will be expounded with the title which indicates 
its distinctiveness, ‘the love of God.’ Creation, Pro- 
vidence, Sovereignty will all be dealt with from this 
standpoint. What has to be said about man and sin, 
judgment and forgiveness, will also be here included. 
Then the life into which mankind is redeemed by the 
love of God in the grace of Christ will be exhibited 
under the like significant title, ‘ the communion of the 
Holy Spirit.’ This will include the individual Chris- 
tian life and the corporate Christian fellowship (the 
Church), and the consummation of both in the blessed 
and glorious immortality on the one hand and the 
coming of the Kingdom of God on the other. Then 
the organic unity of the triple manifestation of God 
in human history will, so far as with our present 
knowledge is possible, be demonstrated in a doctrine 
of the Trinity under the title, ‘ Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit, one God.’ 

(3) The Apostolic Benediction not only supplies the 
distinctive titles of the sections of this volume, but 
it also indicates the directive principle of the theology 
to be here expounded. All that is inconsistent with 
the conception of God as here presented will be ex- 
cluded; only that will be included which is in accord. 
The formal principle of the Reformation—the Holy 
Scriptures—is too wide, for, as has already been 
recognised, there are stages of moral and religious 
development in the Old Testament which Christ has 
corrected and superseded, and, therefore, no doctrine 
can be claimed as distinctively Christian because it 
can be supported by an array of texts. Neither, it 
must be added, need a deduction from this directive 
principle be denied because a text cannot be quoted 
in proof of it. The guidance of God’s Holy Spirit 


show that the Gentile converts did not begin with the God of the Jews as 
the object of their faith, but with the Lord Jesus Christ, and that only later 
theologians sought to relate the personal Saviour to the Divine Power. 


~ 


26 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


is not withheld from the Christian thinker who seeks 
to discover and display the unsearchable riches of 
Christ. Care must of course be exercised lest the 
individual judgment err in either exclusion of what 
is expressly taught in any portion of the Scriptures, 
or inclusion of what can be only regarded as implicit 
in distinctively Christian truth. The material prin- 
ciple of the Reformation—justification by faith alone 
—is too narrow; for we must include all that is in- 
volved in the revelation of God and the redemption of 
man in Jesus Christ the Lord. To put the directive 
principle in a simple, short phrase, God as Saviour 
seems to be adequate; or, using the apostolic bene- 
diction, but arranging the clauses so as to bring out 
the mutual relations, we may affirm that Christian 
theology is concerned with the love of God in the 
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ unto the communion of 
the Holy Spirit. This will afford a demonstration of 
what the fact of Christ means and is worth to faith. 

(4) There is a movement towards Christian reunion 
with which the writer is in entire accord, and to 
which it would be a deep satisfaction if his volume 
could be accepted as a helpful contribution. What 
creed shall be the basis of such reunion? The writer 
would be wholly satisfied himself if such a creed were 
found in the apostolic benediction, interpreted in 
accordance with the teaching of the New Testament, 
and with grateful regard for what the collective ex- 
perience of the Christian Church can teach. Many 
a creed has come to man as a burden to the mind. 
Would not this creed, which this volume will attempt. 
to expound in a spirit in accord with its content, 
come as indeed a benediction to the thought and life 
of men ? 


SECTION I 
‘THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST’ 


INTRODUCTORY 


As this volume is not concerned with either Biblical 
Theology or Church History, but with Constructive 
Theology, the statement of the Christian Doctrine 
of the Godhead, which in the writer’s judgment covers 
the whole ground of Theology, for the thought and 
in the terms of to-day, no attempt will be made to 
deal exhaustively with the whole contents of the 
New Testament relating to this theme; but an 
endeavour will be made to present the object of 
Christian faith—the fact of Christ—as that has been 
simplified, clarified, and vitalised for the writer by 
many years of study, meditation, and experience. 
This essay does not profess to be more than the 
writer’s own confession of faith, which, as it has been 
shaped in the fellowship and ministry of the Christian 
Church, it is to be hoped will have meaning and worth 
for others. 


CHAPTER I 


THE EVANGELICAL TESTIMONY: 4. THE 
PERSON OF CHRIST 


CRITICAL questions are not to be discussed in any 
detail, but 1t is necessary to state what is here assumed 
regarding the literary sources.! 

(i) The distinction between the Synoptic Gospels 
and the Fourth Gospel, and the interrelation of the 
Synoptic Gospels, is recognised. The Gospel according 
to Mark is accepted as the earliest Gospel, the content 
of which is almost entirely reproduced in Matthew 
and Luke. A second source of the common material 
in Matthew and Luke, not derived from Mark, is also 
accepted. This is usually referred to as Q, the initial 
letter of the German word Quelle, source. The prob- 
ability that Luke had a third source, the ‘ Travel 
document,’ is also admitted. The interest in Mark 
is the development of the faith of the disciples in 
the Messiahship of Jesus, and their failure to respond, 
after the Messiahship had been confessed, to their 
Master’s teaching regarding the need of His Passion. 
The interest of Matthew is in Christianity as a new 
law superseding the Jewish, and of Luke in Chris- 
tianity as a Gospel of grace, the Pauline standpoint 
without the details of the Pauline theology. The 
difference of interest determines the use of the 
common material by Matthew and Luke. In regard 
to Q, consisting mainly of sayings of Jesus, Matthew 
collects sayings on different occasions into discourses, 
while Luke gives them separately, generally in their 
proper historical context. Mark was a companion of 

' See Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, by Moffatt; The 
Gospel History and its Transmission, by Burkitt; The Criticism of the Fourth 


Gospel, by Sanday ; The Gospels as Historical Documents, by Stanton. 
29 


30 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Peter, and reproduces his witness to the ministry of 
Jesus. Luke, ‘ the beloved physician,’ was the com- 
panion of Paul, and wrote the Book of Acts also. 
Matthew the disciple probably collected the sayings 
now forming the second source Q; hence his name 
has been transferred to the First Gospel because it 
so fully uses this material. After giving due con- 
sideration to the views of Protestant Liberalism as 
represented by Harnack, and Roman Catholic Modern- 
ism as displayed in the writings of Loisy, and the more 
recent representations of Kirsopp Lake and Foakes- 
Jackson, the writer remains convinced, with Headlam, 
of the substantial historical accuracy of the Synop- 
tic Gospels without in any way committing himself 
to any doctrine of inerrancy. This conclusion of 
previous critical studies is the assumption of this 
constructive effort, and the writer does not regard it 
as incumbent on him to interrupt the course of his 
exposition by any discussion in detail of these critical 
views. It is not necessary for the present purpose 
to deal with the probable dates of the Gospels; all 
that need be said is that they are not so removed from 
the events recorded as to be untrustworthy. 

(ii) The Fourth Gospel stands between evangelical 
testimony and apostolic interpretation. The recol- 
lections of a personal disciple of Jesus have been 
modified by subsequent meditation on them, and even 
in the final presentation by philosophical and theo- 
logical influences of the end of the first century ; and 
it is a delicate and difficult task to disentangle these 
three strands in what at first sight appears to be a 
living unity.? The writer holds on grounds of historic 
probability that there was a Judaean ministry at 
successive feasts, and that in this respect the Fourth 
Gospel corrects and supplements the one-sided repre- 
sentation of Mark, dependent on Peter, which has — 
determined that of Matthew and Luke. He feels 

* See What is Christianity ? by Harnack; The Gospel and the Church, by — 
Loisy ; The Beginnings of Christianity, by Foakes-Jackson and Kirsopp 
Lake, Part 1. vol. i.; Life and Teaching of Christ, by Headlam. 


* See the books of Sanday and Stanton already mentioned in a previous 
note; and The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel, by Burney. 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST — 31 


justified in asserting this position, only if the beloved 
disciple, whose recollections and meditations may be 
traced, can be regarded as a Judaean disciple whose 
interest was confined to Judaea, as was Peter’s to 
Galilee. How John the son of Zebedee, a Galilaean 
disciple, could so ignore the ministry in Galilee, and 
know so well the ministry in Judaea, appears an 
insoluble problem. The writer is convinced that to 
maintain his authorship is greatly to increase the 
_ difficulty of maintaining the historical value of the 

Gospel. While in dealing with this Gospel the writer 
is always mindful that interpretation blends with 
testimony, yet he holds that it may legitimately 
be used to supplement the Synoptic representation, 
which a study of the Gospels for many years has 
convinced him is itself one-sided owing to the limita- 
tions of understanding and sympathy of those from 
whom their contents are derived. Details may need 
critical examination in the course of the discussion, 
but this brief critical introduction is in the writer’s 
judgment adequate for his purpose. 


I 


(i) It has been usual to distinguish the person from 

the work of Christ in the treatment of these subjects 
in systematic theology, and even to confine the work 
of Christ to His salvation of men by His sacrifice. 
No such limitation on the work of Christ will here 
be imposed, but the whole of His manifold activity 
among and for men will be taken into account. 
Although a man shows what he is in all he does, 
and all a man does proves what he is, and in pro- 
portion to the sincerity, transparency, and reality is 
this unity of personality and activity, yet the dis- 
tinction between person and work is convenient for 
a clear and full treatment of the subject. 

(ii) Christian theology has often begun with the 
doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and then come 
down from that speculative height to the levels of 
history, and has failed to see clearly what was there, 


32 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


a real humanity. The manhood has not been con- 
eeived in accordance with the historical evidence, but 
to secure consistency with an abstract idea of God 
which had no relevance to the facts. There was a 
descent of Godhead to manhood, as we shall after- 
wards recognise, but that is an inference from the 
known facts, and not itself a fact known, and we 
must follow in this exposition not the speculative 
but the historical path, the ascent of faith from 
the knowledge of the manhood to the belief in the 
Godhead. There was a time when the preacher or 
writer who laid stress on the humanity ran the risk 
of being charged with a denial of the divinity, and 
being called an Unitarian. But, although there are 
still some reactionary theological circles for whom 
the word divinity is not definite enough, but who will 
speak about the deity of Christ, intending thereby 
to aseribe to Christ, even in His earthly life, the 
possession and exercise of divine attributes incon- 
ceivable in combination with a real humanity, there 
has been a decided change, and many are attracted 
to the human personality, and find in that the 
divine reality, who would at first be repelled by a 
doctrine of divinity. And not only so: it is the 
recognition of the real humanity, in which the true 
divinity is manifest and communicative, which gives 
the fullest content to the word grace as the alone 
adequate descriptive epithet for what Jesus was and 
did. Grace is love stooping, suffering, seeking that 
it may save; and the love of God were not shown 
and proved as grace, had not God in Him stooped 
to share man’s life and bear man’s lot. But to 
assert the real humanity is not to affirm that Jesus 
was an ordinary man, and that we cannot believe of 
Him what we cannot believe of men generally, or 
that we must deny as facts whatever in the Gospels 
goes beyond what might be said of an ordinary man. 
We must allow the facts to modify our conception 
of real humanity. 

(1) What men most prize in the Gospel record is 
the evidence it gives of a real moral experience of 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 38 


Jesus (it is appropriate that we should use this 
human name in dealing with the real humanity). 
That *‘ He was tempted in all points even as we are’ 
(Heb. iv. 15) gives Him such a value to men struggling 
against temptation as no other fact could, for even 
His Saviourhood from sin would mean less had He 
never shared such an experience. To assume that 
somehow His divinity removed all moral risk and 
moral strain and stress would, more than any other 
consideration, turn the Incarnation into a sham and 
mockery for men. Here, if anywhere, God coming 
to man as man must meet him, and stand with him 
onthe same ground. We must so conceive the divinity 
that it will allow reality to this liability to temptation. 
_~ (i) Temptation is not itself sin, although it may 
be an occasion for and even a provocation of sin. 
Temptation may have its source in previous indulgence 
in evil. The drunkard is so severely tempted because 
he has voluntarily acquired the habit of drinking, 
with the consequent crave for more drink. But 
animal appetites and physical impulses, innocent in 
themselves, and wrong only as they come into conflict 
with the dictates of conscience, may be the sources of 
temptation. The social environment may offer sug- 
gestions and inducements to evil to one in these par- 
ticular respects hitherto innocent. When we closely 
examine the temptations of Jesus as recorded in the 
Gospels, in the Wilderness, at Caesarea Philippi, and 
in Gethsemane, we find that none springs out of 
previous sin. Probably the story of the Temptation 
in the Wilderness, as it appears in Matthew and 
Luke—not in Mark, who mentions only the fact of 
temptation without the details—was told by Jesus to 
His disciples at Caesarea Philippi subsequently to His 
rebuke of Peter as Satan (Matt. xvi. 23) and in 
explanation of that rebuke, and even (may we add ?”) 
in justification of its severity. In symbolic form He 
presented the inward conflict in which He rejected 
the popular expectations, based on prophetic pre- 
dictions and apocalyptic speculations, of the Messiah- 
ship, and chose the path of dependence on and 
C 


34 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


submission to His heavenly Father, even although 
that was a path of suffering. In the self-pleasing, 
self-display, and self-advancement that such a 
Messiahship involved He had first the moral insight 
to discover a temptation, and then the moral strength 
to reject it. At Caesarea Philippi the disciple whom 
He had just commended tempted Him to self-sparing 
in shunning suffering, and because it came from loved 
lips the trial was the more severe. In Gethsemane 
He was tempted to shrink from the cup (xxvi. 39) 
not merely of bodily agony but of darkness and 
desolation of spirit which He experienced on Calvary 
(xxvii. 46), and there was no sin in the Son’s shrinking 
from any separation from the Father, although there 
would have been sin had the cup been refused, when 
it was clearly known to be the Father’s will. ‘ He 
learned obedience through the things that He suffered ’ 
(Heb. v. 8)—not to obey, but how far the demand to 
obedience might go, even that He who had always 
rejoiced in the Father’s presence as His sacrifice for 
man’s redemption must consent to forego that 
blessing. His temptations thus came to Him be- 
cause of His vocation, and were worthy of His 
personality. For ‘ that He was tempted in all points ’ 
(iv. 15) does not mean that He had just the same 
temptations as all men have, but that temptation 
was as real a factor in His experience as it is in that 
of all men. 

(ii) That there was a possibility of the wrong choice 
we must maintain; had He been certain that He 
could not fall, temptation would not have been a real 
moral experience for Him, and so far the Incarnation 
would have been a semblance. But living as He did 
in immediate contact and intimate communion with 
God as Father, there was no moral probability that 
He would fall; and we need not concern ourselves 
with the speculative question of how God would have 
redeemed man apart from Him. Reverence and 
adoration forbid our contemplating that possibility, 
but we cannot deny it without sacrificing the reality 
of the Incarnation, 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 35 


(iii) That He was tempted, and yet ‘without sin,’ 
does not lessen the value of His temptation to us. 
For, firstly, His sympathy is no less perfect because 
He remained sinless under temptation. It is entirely 
an error to suppose that those who have fallen will 
be most sympathetic to others who share their tempta- 
tion. The work of rescue among fallen women is best 
done by pure women, and it is not necessary to be 
a converted drunkard to stand by those for whom 
danger lies in taking liquor. The better a man is, if 
his saintliness be that of holy love, the more pitiful 
and helpful can he be to sinners. For not only does 
sin blunt the sensibilities and weaken the affections, 
but he who has carried the fight to a finish and has 
overcome knows the severity of the struggle as he 
who has yielded cannot know it. And, secondly, Jesus 
is not merely an example whom we are to imitate 
only with such resources as are at our command. He 
gives the power as well as shows the pattern of the 
good life. It was from His religious experience as 
Son, knowing, trusting, and serving the Father in 
holy love, that He drew the moral resources for His 
victory over temptation. In His grace He mediates 
for us the love of God, which comes to us in the 
presence and power of God’s Holy Spirit, nN US, 
too, more than conquerors. 

(2) His moral experience is thus explicable only by 
His religious experience, of which we may quite 
reverently speak. The eighteenth century was not 
so altogether wrong when it recognised a religion of 
Jesus as well as a Christian religion, although it did 
err in thinking that the one could replace the other. 
Jesus Himself was the subject of faith, as well as the 
object of faith for others; and surely His is both the 
typical and creative faith (Heb. xn. 2). We believe 
in God through Him, because He believed and as He 
believed in God. We look unto Jesus as the pioneer 
and the consummator of faith, as showing all that 
faith can do and dare. He Himself endured and 
achieved through faith in God all that we may be 
called to endure and achieve through faith in Him, 


36 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


He is the object of our faith as Himself the subject of 
faith. It is very significant that in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews two of the proofs that He is not ashamed to 
eall men brethren are these: ‘In the midst of the 
congregation will I sing Thy praise’; and ‘ I will put 
My trust in Him’ (11. 12, 13). 

The knowledge that He claimed of God was not, 
as has sometimes been asserted, a claim to share 
God’s omniscience. He knew God as Father in the 
dependence, confidence, and submission of a Son—that 
is, by the exercise of faith. It will be necessary to 
discuss the religious consciousness of Jesus as Son 
very much more fully at a later stage, but its char- 
acteristic faith is here insisted on for this reason. 
Omniscience can neither exercise faith nor be tempted. 
Temptation, to be real, involves that the issue of the 
conflict is unknown ; and he who knew all the relevant 
facts of a moral situation would not be exposed to 
such a conflict. Such faith as belief is less than 
knowledge because less certain; while as a psychic act 
it is more, as by trust and surrender giving to the 
belief, if not the certainty of knowledge, yet so high 
a degree of probability as to justify action. The 
religious experience no less than the moral compels 
us, to preserve its reality, to admit the limitation of 
knowledge as well as the liability to temptation. 

(i) While there are in the Gospels instances of Jesus’ 
asking questions, not as feigning ignorance, as some 
of the Fathers maintained, but because He desired 
information, two crucial proofs will suffice. He con- 
fessed that ‘of that day or that hour knoweth no 
one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, 
but the Father’ (Mark xii. 32). There is surely an 
intentional climax. That men should not know is 
not surprising; that angels should not know is sur- 
prising; most surprising it seemed to Him that He 
as Son should not know, and that it had not been 
delivered to Him as part of His knowledge of the 
Father. Here He seems to be referring to His own 
Second Coming. It is to the fall of Jerusalem as 
God’s judgment on the nation and the city which had 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 37 


rejected Him that He refers when He declares: ‘ This 
generation shall not pass away until all these things 
be accomplished’ (v. 30). Why that confession of 
ignorance, and this confident prediction? The ex- 
planation surely is this, that He did not know all the 
conditions which must be fulfilled for His Second 
Coming, but He did know with a historical foresight 
due to His moral and religious insight that nation 
and city were ripe for God’s judgment. Such a pre- 
diction shows a prophetic consciousness, but not a 
divine omniscience. Still more surprising is the con- 
fession of ignorance implicit in the prayer in Geth- 
semane: ‘O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup 
pass away from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but 
as Thou wilt’ (Matt. xxvi. 39). If we recall the 
frequency and certainty with which Jesus foretold 
His. Passion, it is altogether improbable that death 
itself was the cup. Is it not probable that as death 
approached He became more fully aware of all that 
death would involve for Him, the darkness and 
desolation which He experienced on Calvary ? 

_ (11) If in two matters so closely concerning Himself 
He confessed ignorance, then surely we are forced to 
recognise that as regards facts and dates of history 
regarding which information must be acquired, and 
which no moral or religious insight can discover, He 
shared the ignorance of His own age and surroundings. 
On two questions especially must that ignorance be 
recognised. (a) While He had a moral and spiritual 
insight as regards the meaning of the Holy Scriptures 
such as no other had, and His treatment of the Old 
Testament shows a freedom from the defects of 
Rabbinism, of which even St. Paul is not altogether 
free, yet as to questions of authorship, ete., which 
scholarship alone can answer after searching inquiry, 
He shared the traditions of His time. For Him as 
for His contemporaries the law was from Moses, and 
the Psalms from David. He makes no claim to speak 
with special authority on any of these matters. His 
reference to Jonah has been used as authenticating 
the historical character of that story ; but it may be 


38 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


pointed out that a comparison of Matt. xi. 39-41 and 
Luke xi. 29-30 shows that v.40 in the first passage, which 
deals with the experience of the prophet in the whale’s 
belly and treats it as an analogue of Christ’s burial 
and resurrection, has no parallel in the second passage, 
and may be regarded as a later gloss. Jesus was not 
three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 
Such a blunder would not have been made when there 
was still a vivid recollection that it was on the third 
day that Jesus rose from the dead. It is a confusion 
of things great and small to assume, as the defenders 
of traditional views do, that it makes any difference 
to the true enduring value of the Bible to abandon 
these views for the critical. Jesus at least cannot be 
cited as a witness in favour of tradition, speaking with 
the same authority as that with which He revealed the 
Father. : 
(b) A second question on which we are justified in 
assuming that He had only such knowledge as His 
time and people had is that of ‘ demonic possession.’ 
Whether there are or are not evil spirits is a question 
on which it would be rash to dogmatise. We should 
remember that the belief may be regarded as a survival 
into a higher stage of religious thought of an almost 
primitive animism, explicable both by the stage of 
human development and by the conditions affect- 
ing it, and that Zoroastrian influences had greatly 
strengthened that belief in contemporary Judaism. 
Whether Jesus shared that belief Himself, or only used 
the current language in regard to it, it cannot surely 
be claimed that either the correction or the confirma- 
tion of the belief fell within His distinctive function 
of Revealer of the Father. Unless where it is felt that 
His authority imposes the belief, Christian experience 
offers no convincing evidence for it. But even if it 
were held that as regards the existence of good and 
bad spirits Jesus’ speech must be final, yet surely the 
same claim cannot be made for the belief in ‘ demon 
possession.’ The causation of disease is a question 
of scientific inquiry and not of religious conviction. It 
is only where belief in the manifold activity of demons 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 39 
prevails that such an explanation is offered. All the 
evidence the Gospels supply justifies the conclusion 
that the symptoms of demon possession coincide with 
the symptoms of insanity. Even the belief of the 
victims that they were so possessed is a symptom of 
insanity, for the insane reproduce in distorted, ex- 
travagant form current thought. When preachers 
were in the habit of dealing with the subject of the 
unpardonable sin, religious melancholia assumed the 
form of believing that that sin had been committed. 
The writer has himself had to deal with two such 
cases. ‘That missionaries report that they have met 
with such cases of demon possession in the foreign 
field is but a confirmation of this conclusion. The 
dominance of the belief in demons is an adequate 
explanation of the delusions of the insane. ‘That some 
of the insane, or demon-possessed, confessed Jesus 
as Messiah is no proof that the demons possessed a 
secret knowledge of what He was which good men 
had not yet all reached; but that, without reserve 
and restraint such as the sane practised, the insane 
gave voice to surmises and questions that were being 
repeated in their hearing. The belief in demonic 
possession need not be an article of Christian faith.? 
What has been said of demonic possession applies also 
to the whole realm of physical science. On all 
these questions Jesus knew only what others knew. 
Whether as regards facts of history or causes and 
laws in nature, there was limitation of knowledge. 

(iii) There are two directions in which His know- 
ledge seemed to reach beyond that of His contem- 
poraries. He had on the one hand an insight into 
the moral and spiritual condition of others, and on the 
other a foresight regarding the course of events, which 
may at first sight appear altogether supernatural. 
(a) The perfection of His moral character, the absolute- 
ness of His religious consciousness, the finality of His 
mediatorial function, to all of which we shall return 
in the next section of this chapter, do make it probable 
that He did possess an insight and a foresight of the 


1 See Alexander’s Demonic Possession. 


40 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


highest degree compatible with a real humanity. But 
we should rashly cut the Gordian knot of the problem 
of His personality if we simply regarded both as 
evidence of divine omniscience, for there are human 
analogues of both. <A sensitive, sympathetic nature 
can transcend the limits of separate personality, and 
can receive and respond to the inner life of others. 
That Jesus knew how many husbands the woman 
of Samaria had had is altogether improbable; and 
we can explain the evangelist’s statement only by 
assuming that, as no disciple was present at the inter- 
view, the woman in subsequently repeating it trans- 
ferred to the lips of Jesus the accusation of her own 
conscience, stirred to activity by His presence, in her 
quite honest belief that ‘ He told me all things that 
ever I did’ (John iv. 18, 29). That He was aware 
that He was in the presence of one with an uneasy 
conscience is altogether probable. As the Physician 
of souls He knew all which it was necessary He should 
know to diagnose the disease. He might detect at 
once when Judas began to be discontented and dis- 
loyal (as John vi. 64 at least suggests) ; but when He 
chose Judas He did not choose him to be traitor, 
and His references to betrayal were surely appeals 
to Judas to turn him from the way of perdition. 
When He commended Peter, He did not know how 
soon He was to be the Tempter (Matt. xvi. 18, 23). 
This insight was not a complete knowledge such as 
divine omniscience might be. It is love which gives 
insight, and it was the perfection of the love of Jesus 
which enabled Him to enter into the life of others 
and to make it so fully His own. 

(b) As regards His foresight, it must be related to 
His insight. Because He so understood men, He 
could foresee the tendency of events and foretell them. 
This prediction was, like that of the prophets, condt- 
tional. Had His appeals to Judas moved him from 
his purpose, he at least would not have been the 
betrayer. Had His appeals to Jerusalem found a 
response of repentance and faith, its doom might have 
been deferred, if not averted, for it was Jewish 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 41 


fanaticism which hastened the end. As man 1s free, 
and is in partnership with God in the making of 
history, the future is not fixed by any divine decree, 
and there is not, and cannot be, any unconditional 
prediction. The prophet succeeds with this warning 
of judgment, as his prediction fails. Only one prophet 
—the peevish Jonah—is represented as displeased 
because his warnings had been heeded, and so his 
reputation for accurate prediction had been. lost. 
Jesus spoke with such confidence of Judas’ betrayal 
and of the doom of Jerusalem, because He knew what 
was in man by His moral and religious insight. 

(iv) But it may be urged, in view of this limitation 
of knowledge, how can we accept Jesus as the authori- 
tative Teacher? There is a distinction which we are 
warranted in making which removes the difficulty. 
We may distinguish knowledge of facts, and insight 
into moral and religious truth, between learning and 
wisdom. James 1. has been described as ‘ the most 
learned fool in Christendom.’ A man may have much 
knowledge and little understanding. The seer’s vision 
of God and the saint’s submission to God are in no 
way affected by the extent of knowledge which the 
one or the other may possess. A scholar may be very 
fallible in moral judgment, and a great man of science 
may lack any sense of the reality of God. The insight 
of Jesus into moral and religious truth was in no way 
affected by His limitation of knowledge as regards 
nature and history. Such knowledge may be acquired 
by learning from others; but such insight is rooted 
in the personality. What Jesus was concerned with 
was the revelation of God and the redemption of man, 
and His efficacy in that function did not in any way 
depend on the extent of His knowledge, but on the 
unerring insight He had because of His immediate 
contact and intimate communion with God as Father. 
He had an unclouded vision of the reality of God 
as Father, and of all that that reality involved for 
man’s relation as child to God, the duty that relation 
imposed, and the destiny that relation promised. 
He did not claim omniscience or infallibility in any 


42 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 
sphere except this, and yet this is the sphere to which 
man’s knowledge could never reach, and which all 
man’s learning could never disclose. What is know- 
ledge of nature and history such as man by his own 
endeavours can acquire, compared with the knowledge 
of God as Father which the Son alone possessed, and 
alone could impart to men? To acknowledge limita- 
tion of knowledge is not to deny or diminish the 
revelation of God in Him as final and perfect. 

(3) In view of the affirmation by many of the 
Christian Fathers, borrowed from Greek philosophy, 
of the impassibility of God, it 1s necessary to lay 
very special emphasis on the quick sensibility, the 
emotional intensity of Jesus. 

(1) He was subject to quick and keen feeling. He 
was moved to compassion for human need, sorrow, 
and sin (Mark i. 41); to indignation against unbelief 
and wrong (111.5). He was grieved as well as surprised 
at the dulness and slowness of understanding of His 
disciples (viii. 21). He wept over impenitent Jeru- 
salem, and at the grave of Lazarus (Luke xix. 41; 
John xi. 35). In Gethsemane He was exceeding 
sorrowful, even unto death (Matt. xxvi. 38). Was there 
ever sorrow like unto His sorrow on the Cross, where 
He tasted death for every man, that is, entered fully 
into the experience of dying? He was ‘ the man of 
sorrows, acquainted with grief’ (Is. lili. 3). Common 
as has been this representation, true as it is, it is yet 
one-sided. He could and did rejoice as well as mourn. 
‘ He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit’ (Luke x. 21). His 
knowledge of His own Sonship, and God’s Fatherhood, 
and His calling to share that knowledge with others, 
made Him blessed, a blessedness His disciples could 
share with Him (v. 28). Finding here His own rest 
from labour and burden, He could offer rest to others 
(Matt. xi. 28-30). His meekness and lowliness of 
heart, His dependence on and submission to His 
Father, made for Him the yoke easy and the burden 
light. He could leave to His disciples a legacy of 
peace (John xiv. 27). It was for the joy that was set 
before Him that He endured the Cross (Heb. xii. 2). 


—— ee 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 43 


He surely both fathomed the depths of agony, and 
scaled the heights of ecstasy. 

(11) As this emotion was not self-centred or self- 
enclosed, but was made by His universal love expan- 
sive, He shared with men their joys and their sorrows 
as a selfish heart never can. The greatness of the 
sacrifice which He endured and achieved for man’s 
salvation was determined by this capacity to feel with 
and for others. Gethsemane and Calvary bear witness 
how He could bear upon His own heart the crushing 
load of the shame, and sorrow, and suffering imposed 
by human sin. He could not have shared with and 
for man the consequences of human sin as He did had 
there not been this expansive emotion, this loving 
heart that could draw into its own inmost shrine the 
woes and griefs of others. He felt as man the sorrow 
of universal humanity. And as He was one with His 
Father, so God felt in Him with and for man. In 
His liability to temptation, in His limitation of know- 
ledge, in His subjection to emotion He identified 
. Himself with man, and so also God did in Him. 


Il 


Having noted these features of a real humanity, 
we may now ask ourselves what are the proofs of a 
true divinity. We must not rely to-day on proofs 
such as were advanced in former days :—the pre- 
existence, the virgin-birth, the fulfilment of prophecy, 
or the performance of miracles; for this kind of 
argument is ineffective for our age. About each 
of these, however, a few words may be said. 

(i) The references to pre-existence are so few, and 
are all found in the Fourth Gospel. They cannot, 
therefore, be the basis of a proof. As will afterwards 
be shown, we may find a place for these references in 
the exposition of Jesus’ religious consciousness as 
Son, and need not now further discuss them. 

(ii) The virgin-birth, disputed as the fact is, cannot 
be relied on in any convincing argument for the 
divinity of Jesus, and is indeed irrelevant, as it 


44 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


concerns the humanity and not the divinity, for God 
is not born, but man. The writer himself does not 
feel justified in a confident denial or affirmation of 
the fact, although he leans to the latter. If it be a 
fact, its significance can be exhibited in discussing 
the moral character of Jesus. 

(i111) Jesus Himself claimed to fulfil law and prophecy; 
He came as the completion of the progressive revela- 
tion of God in the Old Testament (Matt. v.17). He 
corrected what was defective in its religion or morals. 
He filled up that which was lacking in its truth and 
grace. The ethical monotheism of the prophets He 
crowned by making God known as Father, and man 
as the child of God, called to be perfect even as the 
Father is perfect (v. 48). He abolished the sacrificial 
system of Judaism by giving mankind the good things, 
of which these ordinances were but the shadow, for 
He fully met the needs of the soul which these had 
been discovered unfit to meet.1. He instituted the new 
covenant, prophesied by Jeremiah (xxxi. 31-34), in 
His blood; by His sacrifice men were brought into 
a new relation to God (Matt. xxvi. 28; 1 Cor. xi. 25). 
The hope of deliverance and blessing that had sus- 
tained God’s saints in times of affliction He brought 
to fruition by a salvation more excellent than they 
had conceived or desired. He transformed the apoca- 
lyptic expectations of the Resurrection in the manner 
of His own Risen Life: the hope of immortality was 
confirmed in the eternal life men can find in Him. It 
is probable that in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem 
(Matt. xxi. 1-9) He had the prediction of Zechariah 
(ix. 9) in view; but what He did was done as a last 
argument and appeal to the Jewish people to accept 
the kind of Messiahship that prediction foreshadowed, 
and not merely to fulfil a prediction literally. It is 
not probable that on the Cross He said, ‘I thirst,’ to 
fulfil prophecy, but because He really thirsted (John 
xix. 28): and it was the evangelist who found in the 
cry such a reference to prophecy. After the manner 
of their own time the evangelists, Matthew especially, 

1 This is the thesis of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 45 


did use the argument from prophecy in emphasising 
a correspondence between the events of the life of 
Jesus and prophetic utterances, even such as were not 
intended as predictions. Their procedure is, however, 
so artificial and even arbitrary from the standpoint 
of a historical interpretation of the Holy Scriptures as 
to have no apologetic value for us. The reference in 
Matt. 1. 23 to Is. vil. 14 rests on a mistranslation of 
a Hebrew word in the Greek version. In the prophet’s 
utterance no virgin-birth is predicted. The words 
quoted in ii. 15 from Hos. xi. 1 are not a prediction 
of the flight into Egypt, but a reminder of the people 
by the prophet of God’s goodness to the nation in the 
Exodus. ‘There is a vital connection between the 
Old Testament and the New, the revelation of God 
to the Hebrew nation and in Christ and His Church, 
and the modern study of the Holy Scriptures makes 
that connection clearer and surer; but the argument 
from prophecy as it is presented in the Gospels does 
not carry conviction to-day. 

(iv) That Jesus performed miracles does not itself 
prove His divinity, as a man with a message from God 
might have been entrusted with that power. It is 
because we believe in Him on other grounds as Saviour 
and Lord that the miracles become at all intelligible 
and credible to us. We may relate them vitally to 
His person and His work, as will afterwards be 
attempted, but we cannot advance them as evidence 
of His claims, but must rest our argument on more 
convincing grounds. These grounds are His moral 
character, His religious consciousness, and His media- 
torial efficacy. 

(1) Just as it is the liability to temptation as 
evidence of a real moral experience that many men 
prize most in the real humanity of Jesus, so it is the 
perfection of His moral character, the result of such 
an experience that commands not only admiration, 
but adoration, which for many men will prove the 
most persuasive argument for the true divinity. The 
more theology makes progress in conceiving God as 
moral perfection, the more convincing will the moral 


46 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


character of Jesus be as a proof that He comes from 
God, and makes God known. 

(i) That, though tempted, He did not sin, does not 
lessen, as has been shown, the reality of His humanity, 
but it does point beyond humanity for an explanation. 
In this sinful race heredity and environment do not 
account for sinlessness. Even if we deny the doctrine 
of inherited corruption and total depravity, and take 
the more modern view that the individual moral 
development begins with a handicap, in that animal 
appetites and the natural impulse to self-assertion 
gain a start of the control of the will by conscience, 
Jesus is the only instance of sinlessness, and this 
exception to common human experience needs in 
some way to be accounted for. 

Unless we take the extreme ascetic view that the 
relation of the sexes is itself sinful; and that propaga- 
tion by such a relation is itself a channel of moral 
corruption—a libel on human love, and a blasphemy 
on God who appointed this way for the continuance 
of the race,—virgin-birth itself does not offer any 
explanation. If the tendency to sin be inherited, 
there is no reason, if we set aside the above assumption, 
for supposing that the one parent is more likely to 
transmit that inheritance than the other. If the 
virgin-birth be accepted as fact, it can be brought 
into relation to the sinlessness of Jesus as at least a 
partial explanation in this way, that as His life as a 
human personality began in an exercise of faith by 
His mother in response to the communication of the 
divine purpose concerning her motherhood (Luke i. 88), 
so from the very beginning of His moral development 
that divine grace, which his mother received, was alike 
by heredity and environment a factor potent enough 
to restrain those other factors of human nature that 
impose the moral handicap already mentioned. It 
was the faith of the human race, as represented by 
His mother’s submission to the will of God, that 
opened the door for the entrance into human history 
of this new divine factor, an immediate contact of a 

* See The Origin and Propagation of Sin, by Tennant. 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 47 


developing human personality with the eternal reality 
of God. Even before the consciousness of Sonship 
emerged the relation to God subsisted, and sub- 
consciously influenced the development. If we deny 
the fact of the virgin-birth, such an explanation 
remains probable; what the story of the virgin-birth 
would add would be this, that it would disclose 
certain moral and religious conditions in the mother 
which would afford the points of contact within 
humanity for this new relation of God to human 
personality. Just as Jesus is represented as requiring 
faith for His miraculous activity, so would the super- 
natural act of God in the beginning of the Incarnation, 
the manifestation of God as man, be conditioned by 
human faith. Without any confident dogmatism in 
regard to the matter, if the virgin-birth be fact, so 
interpreted it does make incarnation more intelligible 
and credible. In dealing with this question it has 
been necessary to anticipate the conclusions of this 
discussion of the true divinity, and we may, therefore, 
sum up the immediate argument in a hypothetical 
proposition. If it be proved that Jesus was sinless 
and perfect, and that He was conscious of a unique 
relation to God as Son to Father, then the fact of the 
virgin-birth becomes more probable, and can be 
interpreted in such a way as at least partially to 
explain that sinlessness.? 

(11) Can any evidence for the sinlessness of Jesus 2 
be offered which will stand a close scrutiny? (a) 
We need not be much disturbed by some specific 
charges against His character and conduct which 
have been suggested, as a candid and discriminating 
examination proves that the vocation of Jesus, and 
the circumstances, offer an adequate explanation. 
That in His absorption in the pursuit of the Father’s 
will He remained in the Temple, forgetful of the 
anxiety of His parents (Luke i. 49), does not justify 

1 See The Virgin Birth of Christ, by James Orr, with Appendix, giving 
opinions of living scholars. 

* A monograph on this subject, published more than half a century ago, 


which is still of interest is The Sinlessness of Jesus, by Carl Ullmann, 
translated by Sophia Taylor. 


48 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


a charge of inconsiderateness. ‘That He repelled with 
emphasis His mother’s appeal at the marriage in 
Cana shows that the same dominance of God’s will 
in His consciousness compelled Him to set aside her 
authority in the exercise of those powers of which, for 
the fulfilment of His mission, He had become conscious 
at His Baptism, and the method of using which had 
been determined in His Temptation (John ii, 4). 
That He at first refused the petition of the Syro- 
phoenician mother in language which rebuked the 
Jewish exclusiveness of His disciples, and yet by the 
accompanying look or tone encouraged the mother 
to press her request, is an incident which carries its 
own justification (Mark vii. 27-29). That He called 
Peter Satan at Caesarea Philippi shows, not bad temper, 
only the strain He felt in resisting a temptation pressed 
on Him by so highly favoured a disciple (vin. 33). Hf 
we are to take the story of the withered fig-tree 
literally as a miracle, and not as a misunderstood 
parable, it can best be understood as a parable in act, 
and not in words only, regarding the doom of un- 
fruitfulness—a compassionate warning to the Jewish 
nation (xi. 14). The cleansing of the Temple was a 
legitimate challenge of an ecclesiastical authority, an 
act of righteous zeal against impiety and also in- 
humanity, as it was the Court of the Gentiles which 
was being put to so base uses from the motive of 
greed (vv, 15-17). The severity of His denunciation 
of scribes and Pharisees was but the counterpart of 
His solicitude for the salvation of the people; it was 
love’s judgment on a lovelessness which was hindering 
the grace of God to men (Matt. xxii.). Even could 
we not explain each of these instances to our full 
satisfaction, yet in view of all the evidence regarding 
the moral character of Jesus, it would be more fitting 
for us to distrust our own moral judgment than to 
impute error or wrong to Him. 

(6) The total impression of the historical personality 
as presented to us in the Gospels is of One ‘ holy, 
harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners’ (Heb. vu. 
26), as regards any share in their guilt, but not as 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 49 


regards His seeking that He might save the lost. If 
it be said that the evangelists, or their sources, 
concealed defects, and invented excellences, we can 
answer that we must then ascribe an infallible moral 
insight to them as the only possible explanation 
of their success in their purpose. But it is not in 
imperfect men to conceive such a perfection as Jesus 
presents to us. If it be further urged that there may 
have been secret sins, to them unknown, we may 
insist that no hypocrite is ever so consummate that 
his inward defects do not sometimes betray them- 
selves in word and deed. But the most convincing 
evidence of sinlessness is Jesus’ attitude to sin and 
sinners. The saints have been marked by the in- 
tensity of their penitence for their sins, and the 
urgency of their prayers for forgiveness. This mark 
of saintliness Jesus lacked. He never showed peni- 
tence, nor craved pardon. Unless He suffered from 
a moral insensibility, a deadness of conscience, which 
His character and conduct as disclosed to us make it 
quite impossible for us to aseribe to Him, the only 
explanation possible is this: that He not only was 
not conscious of any sin, but that there was not in 
Him any sin, of which He could repent, and for which 
He must seek pardon. His words to the rich young 
ruler: *‘ Why callest thou Me good? none is good, 
save one, even God’ (Mark x. 18), are not a solitary 
confession of sinfulness, but are a humble acknow- 
ledgment that so long as He was still lable to tempta- 
tion, so long as He was learning obedience through 
the things that He suffered, so long as He had not been 
baptized with the appointed baptism, and had not 
drunk the proffered cup of sacrifiee, He did not claim 
the divine perfection. While He identified Himself 
with the sorrows and sufferings of men, sharing even 
the consequences of sin, which do fall most heavily 
on vicarious love, He did not reckon Himself, al- 
though in the world’s scorn He might be reckoned, 
with transgressors. ‘Not ashamed to call men 
brethren’ (Heb. ii. 11) in relation to the one Father- 
God, in respect of this one thing—sin—He placed 
D 


50 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Himself not on the side of sinful men but of holy God. 
He claimed authority on earth to forgive sins (Mark un. 
10); He declared that He was appointed Judge, so 
that the destiny of men would be determined by their 
relation to Him (John v. 22); He deemed Himself 
capable of offering His life as a ransom for many 
(Matt. xx. 28), and as the sacrifice of the new covenant 
of grace between God and man (xxvi. 28). It is 
inconceivable that One, conscious of sharing in man’s 
sinfulness, could have taken this attitude towards sin 
and sinners. While He suffered Himself to be treated 
as a sinner that sinners might be made the righteous- 
ness of God in Him, yet He knew no sin (2 Cor. v. 21). 
If He was not altogether sinless, He either so deceived 
Himself, or others, that we cannot admire moral 
excellence in Him, not to speak of the adoration of 
moral perfection. ‘To surrender His sinlessness is to 
surrender entirely the only possible object of a faith, 
reverence, and devotion such as the Christian Church 
has believed itself justified in offering to Him. 

(ii) Although sinlessness may appear only as a 
negative conception, yet the actuality of it would 
demand in a world with so many inducements and 
provocations to sin an exceptional moral energy from 
which we should expect abundant positive results of 
goodness and grace. As human personality cannot 
be a moral vacuum, the entire absence of sin is 
conceivable only as due to the abounding presence 
of holiness and love. To attempt to describe the 
perfection of the holy love which we contemplate in 
Jesus seems an impossibility. Only a few features 
of His character can be mentioned which affect more 
directly our conception of His person. (a) First 
must be mentioned His humility, because’ we shall 
never truly conceive the Incarnation unless we regard 
it as the supreme instance of God’s humbling: of 
Himself. » As an encouragement to the labouring and 
heavy-laden, as a disclosure of the secret of rest, the 
light burden and the easy yoke, Jesus described 
Himself as ‘ meek and lowly in heart,’ and what He 
meant by that the immediate context shows. He 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 51 
did not resent His rejection by ‘ the wise and prudent,’ 
and His acceptance only by the babes, the ignorant 
and morally and religiously immature disciples, al- 
though He was disappointed that He had not found 
disciples among the labouring and heavy-laden, the 
men who morally and religiously needed Him most, 
and whom He could most fully help (men like Paul, 
whom in His earthly ministry He did not reach). Nay, 
He even submitted to the will of God. ‘ Yea, Father, 
for so it 1s well-pleasing in Thy sight’ (Matt. x1. 25-30). 
Luke even reports that * in that same hour He rejoiced 
in the Holy Spirit’ (Luke x. 21). While the Fourth 
Gospel is mainly concerned, as the Synoptics are not, 
with the relation of Jesus to God, His Sonship, yet 
that Sonship is represented throughout as an entire 
dependence on, and a complete submission to God, 
as well as an intimate communion and absolute 
confidence in God as Father. It is an interesting 
and even arresting fact, that that Gospel introduces 
that beautiful instance of humility, the washing of 
the disciples’ feet, by a statement emphasising Jesus’ 
consciousness of His relation to God (John xii. 1-8). 
Not only in His relations with men, in choosing for His 
companions working men and women, in going to the 
outcasts of Jewish society as objects of His loving 
care, did He show His humility, but it is in His relation 
to God—as Son to Father—that that grace is made 
most manifest.» Theologians have often misrepre- 
sented Him in writing so much about His claims, as 
though ambition and arrogance were characteristic 
of Him. The Sonship He claimed was such a relation 
to God as could be adorned by meekness and lowliness 
of heart; and His Saviourhood was a humbling of 
Himself to be obedient unto death, even the death of 
the Cross (Phil. 1. 6-8). 

(b) Closely related to His humility was His sympathy ” 
or compassion, taking both words in the fulness of 
their meaning as feeling with others. His love was 
vicarious love; it put Him in the place of those He 
loved, to share their lot with them., While He could 
and did rejoice with those that rejoiced, and at one 


52 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


stage of His ministry could say that it would be 
unmeet for His disciples to fast while He, their 
Bridegroom, was still with them (Mark u. 19), yet as 
Saviour of a sinful race, His self-identification with 
men was for the most part a sorrowing with them. 
He was found among the suffering and sorrowing, 
the sinners and outcasts of Jewish society. He cared 
no less for women and children than for men, contrary 
to the estimates of value of His age and people. The 
despised Samaritan and the hated Gentile He em- 
braced in His interest and affection, even although 
He had to limit His. brief earthly ministry to the 
people to whom in fulfilment of God’s promises He 
had come. The agony of Gethsemane and the desola- 
tion of the Cross witness how completely He could 
make Himself one with sinful mankind so as to endure 
as His own pain and grief the consequences of man’s 
sin, even tasting death for every man (Heb. i. 9). 

(c) While He thus identified Himself with men, He 
was Himself solitary in His moral vision and purpose. 
He told His disciples that if their righteousness did 
not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and 
Pharisees they could not enter into the kingdom of 
heaven (Matt. v. 20), and that, unless they turned, and 
became as little children, they, who were disputing 
about the first place there, would no wise enter 
therein (xvill. 3). He told Nicodemus, and through 
him the Pharisees whom he was representing, that 
without the birth from above they could not even see 
that kingdom, or enter into it (John iii. 3-5). His 
opponents were not the indifferent in morals and 
religion, but the exponents and examples of the 
godliness and goodness of contemporary Judaism. 

' In His holy love, forgiving sin, and suffering to save 
from sin, He was original among men. In some 
respects Gautama the Buddha approaches His per- 
fection more than any other of the great teachers and 
leaders of men, and yet at what a distance! Heredity 
and environment cannot explain that moral tran- 
scendence; and not even genius in the ordinary 
acceptation of the term. As His character in this 


\ 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 58 


particular corresponds so closely with what He taught 
of God as Father, we must regard it as not only 
human excellence, but as a revelation of the perfection 


of.God. 


~ (d) This holy love in sympathy for man, and in 


humility before God, had to be exercised and main- 
tained under conditions of severest testing. ‘Tempted, 
opposed, persecuted, rejected, betrayed, reviled, and 
scorned, He endured, constant in His purpose, and 
sealed His fidelity to God and man in His blood. 
Only a holy love of inexhaustible resource could in 
a sinful world have maintained its consistency as He 
did. His life was surely a seamless garment of per- 
fection, woven by holy love throughout. Such figur- 
ative language must be used to suggest what plain 
words could not express. 

(2) In dealing with the moral character of Jesus 
it has been impossible not to anticipate in some 
statements the discussion of His religious conscious- 
ness, for His morality was a religious morality ; His 
character was rooted in, grew out of, and drew its 
nourishment from His relation to God. 

(i) As His was a real, if ideal and typical humanity, 
we ought to speak of a religious consciousness of 
relation to God. Whatever metaphysical explanation 
we may be led by the facts to offer, we are bound first 
to set forth those facts under that category of our 
thought. He as Son knew Himself as distinct, and 
yet as related to the Father; immediate as might be 
the contact, it was not identity; intimate as might 
be the communion, it was not absorption. That He 
exercised faith, and used prayer towards God, warrants 
our speaking of the religion of Jesus, and we should 
lose much if we hid that fact under a metaphysical 
explanation. While, as has already been shown, 
Jesus’ attitude to sinful mankind places Him on the 
side of God in dealing with sinners, and He made 
claims in that relation which it would have been 
arrogance and audacity for one who knew Himself 
to be only man to make, yet His distinctive religious 
consciousness of relation to God finds expression in 


54 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


only one passage in the Synoptics, to which already 
in another connection reference has been made. This 
passage (Matt. xi. 27= Luke x. 22) undoubtedly belongs 
to the collection of sayings which supplies much 
of the common material of these two Gospels. 
There was a secret of His own nature which He as 
Son knew that God as Father alone knew, and He as 
Son alone knew and could reveal God as Father. 
But this relation of Father and Son is on His part as 
Son one of dependence and submission, for the words 
‘ All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father’ 
are no claim of universal dominion, but a confession 
of entire dependence, even as the words, ‘ Yea, Father, 
for so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight,’ are an utter- 
ance of complete submission. Jesus thus not only 
gave God the name Father, and taught the care and 
bounty, the mercy, pity, and grace of the divine 
Fatherhood, but He revealed the Fatherhood most 
fully and surely by living as Son. The kind of Son 
He was shows the kind of Father God is. While He 
did teach the universal Fatherhood of God, yet there 
ean be no doubt that He was in Himself conscious of 
an immediate relation to God, which for others could 
only be mediated by Him. 

(ii) While we must always remember that in the 
Fourth Gospel recollection comes to us coloured by 
meditation, that history is interpreted by theology, 
yet we are justified in using that Gospel to supplement 
what the Synoptics disclose regarding the Sonship 
of Jesus. Dependence and submission are no less 
asserted there. Only a few crucial sayings need be 
taken. The defence of the Sabbath cure, ‘ My Father 
worketh even until now, and I work’ (John v. 17), is no 
claim to equality with God, as His opponents repre- 
sented it to be, but simply an appeal to the divine 
example. How absolute a dependence is expressed 
in the words: ‘I can of Myself do nothing’ (v. 80)! 
In freely laying down His life He is fulfilling a com- 
mandment received of the Father (x. 18). If we 
follow Moffatt’s rearrangement of passages in chapter 
x. v. 80, ‘I and the Father are one’ would at once 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 55 


follow v. 18, and what would be asserted would be a 
unity of purpose, and not, as a dogmatic interpretation 
would claim, of substance, importing categories of 
thought unknown to the Gospel. What more striking 
confession of dependence and subordination could 
there be than the saying, ° If ye loved Me, ye would 
have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father: for the 
Father is greater than I’ (xiv. 28)? His earthly 
life was relatively a separation from God, in which 
He could not possess from His Father all that His 
return would restore to Him. Sayings that seem to 
contradict this representation of the relation, though 
found in the Fourth Gospel, must be regarded as 
interpretation rather than testimony.? 

(iii) There are a few sayings in the Fourth Gospel 
which carry the relation to God out of the temporal 
process into the eternal reality. Again we confine 
ourselves to what may be with good reason regarded 
as words of Jesus Himself. ‘ Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, Before Abraham was, I am’ (vill. 58). He was 
justifying His claim to bestow eternal life against 
the challenge of His opponents, who affirmed the 
universal mortality even of the greatest men, such as 
Abraham. At this challenge His thought soared 
above the temporal process, to which their minds were 
confined, to the eternal reality of His relation to God, 
and He thought of the Father of those who believe 
as anticipating with gladness His present manifesta- 
tion of that reality. When His opponents again 
dragged Him back into that temporal process, He 
asserted the more emphatically His timelessness, but 
as He was speaking to those whose thoughts could 
move only in time, He represented that timelessness 
as priority in time. Under very different conditions 
did His mind again revert to His relation to the eternal 
reality. ‘Now, O Father, glorify Thou Me, with Thine 
own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before 
the world was’ (xvii. 5). Harnack’s comment on 
v. 24 is worth quoting.’ ‘ The confidence with which 


1 Whatever use may be made in this volume of the Fourth Gospel is based 
on a thorough critical study, if not always in agreement with critics, 


56 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


John lets Him speak to the Father, ‘‘ Thou lovedst Me 
before the foundation of the world,” is surely over- 
heard from Jesus’ own certainty.’ ! Pre-existence is 
an inappropriate term, as it represents an eternal 
relation as priority in the temporal process. To affirm, 
as is done by Tholuck,? that these sayings mean ‘a 
continuity of the consciousness of the historical Christ 
with the Logos’ is both unnecessary and unreasonable. 
In a developing human consciousness such a con- 
tinuity is inconceivable. Did the babe in the mother’s 
womb already possess it, or if not, when did it emerge ? 
Seeing that the first distinct utterance of that con- 
sciousness is found only towards the end of the earthly 
ministry, when His controversy with His opponents 
was being pressed to its final issue, a much more 
probable explanation is that to meet the challenge of 
His opponents, there came to Him, or (should we not 
rather say) the Father gave to Him the certain assur- 
ance that, as His work for men was not to be confined 
to the temporal process of His earthly ministry, so the 
relation to the Father of which He was conscious, and 
which sustained Him in the fulfilment of His vocation 
against all opposition, had not begun in that temporal 
process, but was eternal as God Himself. He knew 
Himself to be the object of the eternal love of God, 
He knew that that involved eternal blessedness in 
communion with God. He believed that the man 
distinguished for his faith could not but have had 
some anticipation of His present manifestation of 
that eternal love and blessedness. It is in some such 
way alone that we can make these sayings intelligible. 

(3) Not only were Jesus’ moral character and religious 
consciousness so unique that we cannot exhaust their 
significance by describing them as human, and must 
ascribe the quality of divinity, but both were creatvve, 
an. added proof of His claim to be related to God as 
Father as no other man has ever been.” The divine 
Fatherhood does not mean only care and bounty in 
providence ; it means primarily a creative fellowship 


1 Das Wesen des Christentums, p. 81. 
* Quoted by Dods in The Expositor’s Greek Testament, 1. p. 841, 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 57 


with man, in which the likeness of the divine perfec- 
tion is reproduced. Jesus was the perfect Son in that 
in an unbroken fellowship with God He reflected 
undimmed the glory of God. It is by the perfect 
Son that the divine Fatherhood towards all men is 
mediated. As mankind is sinful, this revelation of God 
not only to, but in man, must needs be redemptive. 
What were the means by which Jesus fulfilled His 
calling in His revelation of God redemptive of man 
the next section will discuss; but what is here to be 
noted as completing the proof of the divinity of Jesus 
as presented in the evangelical testimony is this, that 
He has done for mankind what God alone could do. 
Through Him there has been realised a fellowship with 
God and a likeness to God in mankind, so that both 
the Fatherhood of God and the sonship of man which 
He revealed are real. By the forgiveness of sin He 
restored the interrupted fellowship with God; by 
His Spirit in men He produces in them a holiness in 
which likeness to God is shown. It is in His Cross 
that His revelation of God in the redemption of man 
is consummated; and yet in His earthly ministry He 
began His creative work of making sinners into chil- 
dren of God and saints. There have been great 
teachers and leaders of the souls of men, but none of 
them claimed to do or did what Jesus has done. 
Through Moses came a law to be obeyed ; Mohammed 
was the prophet of a truth about God; Gautama 
offered man the secret of a salvation which must be 
secured by their own efforts. Christ brings men to 
God and God to men in an immediacy of relation, in 
an intimacy of communion, in a sufficiency and an 
efficacy of divine grace through human faith which is 
a new creation of man in his inmost, highest life. It 
is because of the sufficiency and efficacy both of His 
revelation of God, and His redemption of man, the 
transcendence of what He has done for man over all 
that other teachers and leaders of the soul have 
accomplished, the absolute quality of the relation of 
man to God through Him, that we must confess that 
this work is not of man, even at his very best; but 


58 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


this God and God alone can have wrought. This 
cannot, of course, be demonstrated by merely in- 
tellectual arguments to those who have not had the 
experience of what Christ has done; but for those 
who have that experience, there need be no other 
evidence. They have the witness in themselves that 


He is God. 


CHAPTER IT 


THE EVANGELICAL TESTIMONY: 8B. THE 
WORK OF CHRIST 


As the personality expresses itself in the activity, so 
the work discloses the person of Christ. His person 
in its blended loftiness and lowliness, God as man, is, 
shows, and proves grace; so, as we shall see, does His 
work, which we do not confine, as has often been 
done, to His atoning death. There is a unity of 
motive, purpose, and character in the whole of His 
activity, so that the parts can be understood only 
in the whole. 

(1) Jesus began as a teacher, and it is this aspect 
of His work which first claims attention. It is not 
priority in time, however, that is the whole reason for 
our considering the teaching first of all. Many false 
theories of the atonement have been due to ignoring 
the truth He taught about God and man, and their 
mutual relation. We can understand His sacrifice 
for our salvation only if His mind be in us, if we think 
as He did. 

(i) What was distinctive of that teaching is sug- 
gested by the records of the impression made on 
those who heard. (a) Mark records that * they were 
astonished at His teaching; for He taught them as 
having authority, and not as the scribes’ (i. 22). The 
scribes were interpreters of the Holy Scriptures, and 
even in their interpretation they were prone to quote 
what others had said before them, rather than to 
state what they themselves thought. Conscious of 
the deficiency of their personal authority, they had 
to rely on authorities. Jesus came not as a commen- 
tator, but as a revealer. His forerunner had revived 
the prophetic succession, and He came in that suc- 

59 


60 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


cession as an agent of divine revelation and with a 
freshness, fullness, and freedom so much the greater 
as He was Himself greater. He did not need to 
quote what men had said about God, for He Himself 
knew God with the intimacy of the Son knowing the 
Father. It was His moral and spiritual discernment 
which enabled Him so to speak, that even those who 
knew not the secret of His personality were brought 
under His spell, recognising that He had a right to 
command the assent of the mind, the constraint of 
the heart, and the submission of the will. What His 
first hearers felt, that the generations since have felt. 
His authority cannot be ignored, it must be accepted 
or rejected. That is an issue from which for those 
who move at all in the moral and religious realm there 
can be no escape. He is, and must be, either a stone 
of stumbling, or the rock for building. 

(b) The contrast between the teaching of Jesus and 
that of the scribes indicates another difference; and 
that also is noted in Mark’s Gospel: ‘ What is this ? 
A new teaching’ (i. 27). Efforts have been made to 
discredit the originality of Jesus by showing that 
many of His characteristic sayings can be paralleled 
elsewhere. For instance, it is said that the Golden 
Rule is found in a negative form in Confucius, but 
in a positive in Lao-tsze. There is a likeness between 
the kind of life enjoined by Gautama the Buddha and 
that presented in the moral teaching of Jesus. In the 
Jewish fathers there are sayings about forgiveness 
which very closely resemble what He taught. It is 
assumed that in His teaching about the last things He 
reproduced the apocalyptic ideas of His own age. 
Regarding this argument three things may be said. 
Firstly, it would be very strange if Jesus had never 
said what had been said before Him. God had not 
been without witness in other lands and former times, 
speaking not through the succession of Hebrew 
prophets alone ‘by divers portions and in divers 
manners.’ ‘To be saying what nobody else has ever 
thought of saying is proof of folly and vanity rather 
than of wisdom and virtue, Jesus came, not to 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 61 


startle the world with unheard-of novelties, but to 
carry the moral and religious development of mankind 
to a new stage, transcending and yet fulfilling the 
previous stages, continuous with them as well as 
contrasted to them. 

Secondly, a comparison of the Sermon on the Mount 
alone with the law of Moses and its scribal interpreta- 
tions, and still more with the current practices and 
motives of the Pharisees, who claimed that they made 
morality and religion their chief concern, throws into 
bold relief the indescribable difference. Jesus was 
Himself conscious of that contrast. While He claimed 
to fulfil the law and the prophets,yet the Sermon shows 
that by fulfilment He meant ‘ filling full,’ completing 
what was lacking, correcting what was defective. He 
told His disciples, ‘except your righteousness shall 
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, 
ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven ’ 
(Matt. v. 20). This contrast meant opposition and 
conflict. The undressed cloth will rend the old 
garment; and the new wine burst the old wine-skins 
(Mark 1. 21-22). To give only a few instances: in 
respect of Sabbath observance, the distinction of 
clean and unclean, the relative importance of cere- 
monial and moral requirements, the association of the 
righteous with sinners, Jesus came into conflict with 
the custodians of the morality and religion of His 
age and nation. It is true that He justified Himself 
often by reverting to the older and better teaching 
of the Scriptures; but so to detach oneself from 
present standards and practices and to attach oneself 
to what is discerned as truer and worthier in the past 
to the degree Jesus did, proves originality. 

Thirdly, if we take the teaching as a whole, the 
association of morality with religion, of human duty 
with the relation to God, the dominating principle of 
love in both spheres, the maximum application of 
that principle in unwearied forgiveness of others, and 
unmeasured sacrifice for others, the harmony of 
motive, purpose, and character, giving to all a unity 
such as no other system has possessed, pervaded 


62 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


throughout by a finality and sufficiency which all 
religious and moral thought have not superseded nor 
exhausted, who can doubt that this was indeed ‘a 
new teaching’ ? 

(c) Its general character is described in what Luke 
writes of the impression made in the synagogue at 
Nazareth. ‘ All bore Him witness, and wondered at 
the words of grace which proceeded out of His mouth * 
(iv. 22). It may be impossible for us now to be 
certain of the reference of the word grace: probably 
it is to the matter, and the passage read supports this 
view; for to Luke, the companion of Paul, what was 
important was the revelation of grace in Christ. But 
the evangelical records justify us, and the words allow 
us to include manner and method. The manner of 
the teaching was gracious in keeping with the message. 
The teacher did not repel, but attracted the ignorant 
and even the sinful. We may be sure that a look, a 
smile, a tone, a gesture made what appeared severe 
seem kind, and what in itself was unloving very rich 
in its tenderness. The sinful woman would never 
have dared to come so near to Him had not His 
manner invited approach (Luke vii. 37, 38); and the 
Syrophoenician mother would never have repeated 
her request had not His manner interpreted the word 
which sounded as a denial as an invitation to per- 
severance (Mark vii. 27, 28). The method too was 
gracious, for it always aimed at meeting the need, 
and fitting the capacity of those to whom the speech 
was addressed. ‘ By this method,’ says Wendt,* * of 
meeting the want of the occasion, Jesus has been able 
to impart two weighty qualities to His utterances 
and His instruction, viz.: popular intelligibility and 
impressive pregnancy. ‘The importance lies in_the 
union of these two qualities. A mode of teaching 
which aims at popular intelligibility is exposed to the 
risk of degenerating into platitude and_ triviality ; 
and one which aims at pregnant brevity easily becomes 
stilted and obscure. But Jesus perfectly combined 
the two qualities, and by this very means attained 

1 The Teaching of Jesus, Eng. tr., 1. p. 109. 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 63 


a peculiar and classic beauty of style.’ There was 
grace in the aesthetic sense as well as the religious. 

It hes beyond the scope of this volume to discuss 
the method of Jesus in detail; and the writer just 
quoted may with advantage be studied for this 
purpose. But two observations must be added. 
Firstly, the reason given by Jesus for speaking in 
parables only in appearance and not in reality con- 
tradicts the statement, ‘Unto you is given the 
mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them 
that are without, all things are done in parables: that 
seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing 
they may hear, and not understand ; lest haply they 
should turn again, and it should be forgiven them ’ 
(Mark iv. 11, 12). The words in v. 12 are a quota- 
tion from Isaiah vi. 9. In accordance with Hebraic 
modes of thought the human result of insensibility 
and unresponsiveness to divine truth is there repre- 
sented as the divine intention. What was meant 
was that the attention of those who could not or even 
would not receive His message in plain words must 
be held by a story; a time might come when the 
meaning of the story would unfold itself to them. 
In the form of a parable Jesus lodged a truth in the 
memory, when the understanding was not yet ready 
to receive it. How suggestive the parables have 
proved, revealing and not concealing truth! Secondly, 
if the method of teaching in the Synoptics aims at 
this popular intellgrbility, 1t is not a conclusive objec- 
tion to the authenticity of the teaching presented in 
the Fourth Gospel that it is not the same in form, if 
most of it was addressed, on the one hand, to opponents 
who challenged its truth, and on the other to a disciple, 
or group of disciples, who could receive and respond 
to the teaching as the multitudes, and even for the 
most part the Twelve, could not. But even the 
Fourth Gospel emphasises the reserve and restraint 
of Jesus in that more intimate teaching. ‘I yet have 
many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
now’ (John xvi.12). There was grace in the withhold- 
ing as well as the imparting. It must, however, be 


66 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


assigns to the Christian community of a later age all 
those sayings about God and man, duty and destiny, 
which the Christian Church hitherto has regarded as 
most distinctive of His Gospel. The community is 
represented as greater in its moral and religious in- 
sight than the Founder, and less dependent than He 
was on the contemporary apocalyptic thought. Har- 
nack, in refusing to share this view, rightly states the 
position. ‘ Surely it is a mistake in similar cases to 
judge pre-eminent, truly epoch-making personalities 
first of all in this respect, what they have shared with 
their contemporaries,-and on the contrary to push 
into the background what was distinctive and great 
in them. The inclination as much as possible to level 
down, and to eliminate what is special, may in some 
persons spring from a sense of truth, deserving re- 
cognition, but it is misguided. More frequently there 
prevails here, conscious or unconscious, the endeavour 
not to acknowledge the great, and to throw down the 
lofty.’1 We are justified in affirming that for Jesus 
the kingdom was not merely future, but in His 
presence and activity among men already present 
and active. He was not merely the herald of that 
coming kingdom ; but the kingdom was being already 
established in His revelation of God, and the truth and 
grace which He Himself was already imparting to 
men. His moral teaching was no interim ethics, and 
His function no merely transitional and preparatory 
one. For even Harnack does not do full justice to 
the place Jesus gave Himself in His Gospel.2 Even 
if it be true that He did not preach Himself, but the 
Father, yet He alone knew and could reveal the 
Father. He did require a more intimate personal 
relation to and dependence on Himself than just 
obedience to His commandments; and as has been 
shown, while He was not ashamed to call men brethren, 
yet as regards His consciousness of God’s Fatherhood 
and His revelation of it to man He did distinguish 
Himself from all others, and especially in regard to 


1 Das Wesen des Christentums, p. 35. 
* Ibid., p. 80. 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 67 


sin He stood on the side of God and not of man. He 
was not merely the messenger, but in His relation 
alike to God and man He was included in the content 
of His message. When we come to discuss how He 
conceived His distinctive vocation, all that this state- 
ment means will be made more plain. 

(d) The eschatological school has, however, called 
attention to a feature of Jesus’ teaching which 
Christian theologians have often ignored. The Apos- 
tolic Church lived, laboured, and suffered with a vivid, 
eager expectation of a speedy Advent of Christ in 
power and glory. Could it have cherished that hope 
had there been no ground for it in the teaching of 
Jesus ? ‘That is extremely improbable. Further, we 
should need to do critical violence to the Gospels as 
great as that of the eschatological school were we to 
deny that Jesus gave any eschatological teaching. 
There is no doubt that He foretold the doom of 
Jerusalem, and placed the fulfilment of His prophecy 
within that generation. There seems to be no doubt 
that He also, as did other prophets, placed the 
consummation of all things in close association with 
the immediate judgment of God: but, as we have 
already seen, He confessed ignorance of the day and 
the hour of that event. It is probable that the 
thought of the Apostolic Age has left its colour and 
tone in the transmission of the teaching of Jesus on 
the Last Things, and that probably a greater definite- 
ness was given to some of His sayings than these at 
first displayed. He believed that God could bring 
the fulfilment of His purpose speedily, but He also 
recognised that the unbelief of man might hinder 
and delay this final consummation. He never affirmed 
that the divine power would bring about God’s purpose 
apart from the human process in history, which He 
presented figuratively in such parables as the mustard 
seed and the leaven (Matt. xiii. 31-33). Surely as man 
He was subject to changing moods. When His faith 
in God exalted Him above the conditions of the hour, 
His manifestation in power and glory seemed not only 
certain, but imminent; when His contact with men 


68 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


brought despondency, He was less confident that the 
time was near. What is significant is that for the 
future no less than the present, He was at the centre 
of His message. 

(2) Jesus lived what He taught alike in His religious 
experience and His moral character, as well as the 
grace of His dealings with men. 

(i) His teaching was enforced by His example. 
Those whom He enjoined to learn of Him were also 
ealled to take His yoke upon them, that is, to serve 
not Him, but as He served, to be His yoke-fellows 
(Matt. xi. 29-80). What He said and did was not to 
set an example, but because it was just what it was 
most fit should then and there be said and done. 
Jesus never assumed the moral pose which some men 
do in trying to set an example; in fulfilling His calling 
in word and deed He showed what moral perfection 
is. On one occasion He is represented as doing some- 
thing for the sake of example. When He had washed 
the disciples’ feet, He enforced the meaning of His 
deed in the words: ‘I have given you an example, 
that ye also should do as I have done to you’ (John 
xiii. 15). As the deed, however, was one of humble 
service, there was in it no moral pose, which is often 
so offensive in those who offer themselves as patterns 
to their fellows. As the words to Peter show: ‘If 
I wash thee not thou hast no part with Me’; the 
example was not one merely to be imitated; it was 
in itself one may even say sacramental, the channel 
of the grace that cleansed the disciples from the 
rivalry and ambition which so endangered their 
personal relation to Himself. As it was necessary 
for them, so it was a duty for Him as charged with 
their training for His work. By its moral quality it 
was morally efficacious. ‘This is essentially what the 
moral example of Jesus means. His holy love gains 
such influence over His disciples, that without con- 
scious imitation they are gradually conformed to His 
likeness. Literal reproduction of what He said and 
did is not to follow His example; but vital participa- 
tion in His motive, disposition, purpose is. His. 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 69 


vocation on the one hand, and His circumstances on 
the other, were so unlike ours, that such artificial 
imitation would be a moral absurdity. His perfection, 
while it humbles, also encourages us, for it is the 
perfection of the grace that enables us to do what it 
enjoins; it is a pattern which does not make us 
despair, because it is also a power that is sufficient 
according to our faith for every demand. We may 
truly use of His example the words of Augustine, 
Jube qued vis, Da quod jubes. 

(11) It is in connection both with the teaching and 
the example of Jesus that the miracles may be with 
most advantage considered. (a) They must not be 
regarded as external credentials of supernatural power 
to enforce the authority of Jesus as teacher. That 
teaching appeals to reason, conscience, affection, and 
aspiration, and needs no such enforcement. The 
miracles are necessary constituents of His message 
and mission of grace, in which He revealed the love 
of the Father to men, and showed the characteristics 
of His own religious experience, moral character, and 
mediatorial function. We shall not accordingly give 
the miracles their due place in this work if we lay 
stress on the supernatural power which may have 
been displayed and not on their witness to His con- 
fidence in God and compassion for man. At the 
Temptation Jesus rejected the use of His supernatural 
power on His own behalf or for the advancement of 
His cause as a suggestion of evil. He not only refused, 
but condemned the request for a sign from heaven in 
proof of His claims. The statement in Matt. xvii. 27 
about finding a shekel in the mouth of a fish does not 
afford an instance of any use of supernatural power 
for any personal end; for there is no record that a 
miracle took place, and the words themselves bear 
the construction of a playful command of Jesus to 
Peter to go and earn by his fishing the money which 
was wanted. If the record of the withering of the 
barren fig-tree is to be regarded as the report of a 
miracle, and not ag due to a misunderstanding of a 
parable (a possible explanation, compare Mark xi. 


70 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


13-21 with Luke xiii. 6-9), it would at first sight appear 
an exception to the general rule that the miracles were 
beneficent, healing disease, relieving need, warding 
off danger. But it may be understood, although it 
must be admitted the context does not suggest that 
interpretation, as a symbolic miracle, a prophecy in 
act of the doom to fall on the Jewish nation, which 
had not yielded to the Messiah the fruits of penitence 
and faith. A critical study of the story of the 
Gadarene demoniac shows that Jesus used His power 
to heal the man believing himself possessed, but not 
to destroy the swine, the panic which resulted in 
their destruction being probably due to the violent 
gestures and loud cries of the demoniac, for the word 
Matthew reports as spoken by Jesus, ‘ Go’ (umdyere), 
being addressed to the consciousness of the possessed 
man, does not at all necessarily carry the interpretation 
that Mark puts upon it, ‘ And He gave them leave’ 
(Matt. viii. 82, Mark v. 13). While the beneficent 
character is evident in the miracles of healing, it is 
not so obvious in some of the nature-miracles. A 
supply of wine towards the end of a feast does not 
at first sight appear a necessary service of love; nor 
can we at once see the imperative need of the stilling 
of the storm, or the walking on the sea, unless indeed 
the lives of the disciples were imperilled; but we 
may find the motive of even such miracles in the 
compassion of Jesus, His readiness to respond to any 
human appeal. This we can say confidently, that 
He never worked a miracle for show, to display His 
power, or prove His claim. As the nature-miracles 
present the greatest difficulty for our thought, we may 
postpone their discussion until we have dealt with the 
healing ministry of Jesus. 

(b) Matthew Arnold suggested that the miracles of 
healing were instances of what he called moral thera- 
peutics, because of the close connection between 
moral fault and disease.1 Harnack has advanced a 
similar view: ‘ We see that a firm will and a con-. 
vinced faith act even on the bodily life and cause 


1 Literature and Dogma, pp. 143-4. 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 71 


appearances which appeal to us as miracles. Who 
has here hitherto with certainty measured the realm 
of the possible and real? Nobody. Who can say 
how far the influences of one soul on another soul and 
of the soul on the body reach? Nobody. Who can 
still affirm that all which in this realm appears as 
striking rests only on deception and error ? Certainly 
no miracles occur, but there is enough of the wonderful 
and inexplicable.’! So far as assured medical know- 
ledge goes, not all diseases can be treated by such 
suggestion or influence, but only those due to nervous 
disorder. Dr. Ryle? after a careful examination of 
the records of the healing miracles asserted the con- 
clusion that such an explanation was inadequate. ‘ If 
the dropsy which was cured was real dropsy, and the 
withered arm a real withered arm; if the blind old 
men were not the subjects of hysteria, and the sick 
folk who were laid in the streets were not all neurotics, 
then we can no longer accept the works of healing as 
historical, and reject the so-called cosmical miracles. 
One who could rejuvenate at a word a strand of 
atrophied nerve might bring about the wasting of a 
fie-tree in a moment, and it would be rash to say that 
He might not command the winds and the waves, and 
raise the dead to life.’ The experience gained during 
the War in hospitals in dealing with shell-shock and 
other nervous disorders has, however, led some 
medical men to modify their position, and to widen 
the range of the possible physical consequences of 
nervous disorders. One medical man has declared 
that he has seen cures effected similar to those of 
Jesus with only the one exception of the raising of 
the dead. As regards cure by auto-suggestion, or 
hetero-suggestion,® it has been contended that the 
distinction between functional disorders and organic 
diseases cannot be insisted on. Medical science 
generally has not yet reached the conclusion that all 


1 Das Wesen des Christentums, p. 18. 


2 ¢The Neurotic Theory of the Miracles of Healing,’ Hibbert Journal, v. 
p- 585. 


3 See Baudouin’s Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion. 


"2 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


diseases are curable by such methods. It would be 
very unwise, however, for the Christian apologist to 
take up a position on such a question which even 
a slight advance in medical knowledge and_ skill 
might soon prove to be untenable, and we are forced 
to ask ourselves the question: if the miracles of 
healing are explicable on the lines of this modern 
method of treating disease, to what representation of 
the healing ministry of Jesus must we resort ii 

(c) It must be admitted that the Gospel records 
themselves lend some support to this explanation. 
Jesus required faith in the recipient of the benefit, 
or those who interceded for him. He could not do 
many mighty works in Nazareth because of the un- 
belief of the people (Mark vi. 5). He told the father 
of the epileptic boy that ‘ all things are possible to 
him that believeth’ (Mark ix. 23), and He explained 
the failure of the disciples to effect a cure in the words, 
‘This kind can come out by nothing, save by prayer ’ 
(v. 29). At the grave of Lazarus He is reported as 
lifting up His eyes and saying, ‘ Father, I thank Thee 
that Thou heardest me. And I knew that Thou hearest 
me always’ (John xi, 41-42). The requirement of 
faith made His healing miracles a part of His ministry 
of grace to man, a means of bringing man into closer 
relation to God. That Jesus Himself exercised faith, 
and even expressed His faith in prayer in connection 
with His healing ministry, shows that that ministry 
for Him also had its roots, not only in His moral 
character—His compassion for man, but also in His 
religious experience—His confidence in God. It is 
the psychic energy, the will to cure, due to this com- 
passion for man, and this confidence in God, which 
offers some analogy to this modern method of cure. 
Jesus was ignorant of this discovery of modern medical 
science, and so did not consciously use a method of 
natural cure. He Himself, as well as the witnesses of 
the cures, ascribed them to the supernatural power 
of God. But the possibility must at least be admitted 
that His perfect compassion for man evoked such a 
psychic energy of faith in others, and His perfect 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 73 


confidence in God such a psychic energy of grace in 
Himself, that auto- and hetero-suggestion were com- 
bined in these cures. Even on this assumption, 
however, the activity of God must not be excluded. 
As in prayer the believer is conscious of benefit, 
religious, moral, and even physical, which he could 
not have secured for himself by his own aspiration 
or endeavour, so both the faith of the recipients and 
the faith of the agent in healing provided the conditions 
for the divine working, to which the miracles of Jesus 
were ascribed. There are persons who have in a high 
degree a curative influence over the sick, and probably 
Jesus did possess that pre-eminently. But that He 
had an inherent power to work miracles is on the whole, 
in view of all that has been said about the nature of 
His relation as Son to God as Father, less probable 
than that His miracles were instances of the divine 
activity through Him. While maintaining this view, 
the writer is not prepared to admit, however, that 
this modern method of cure fully explains the healing 
ministry. It is not proved that all the diseases He 
cured could be so treated, and the most wonderful 
events, the raising of the dead and the nature miracles, 
are unexplained. 

(d) Regarding the raising of the dead we cannot 
dogmatise. If we could explain the narratives by 
a confusion of recovery from trance with restoration 
of life the difficulty would certainly be removed. We 
know too little of the relation of body and soul to 
affirm that such a restoration of life after death is 
impossible, however improbable our general experience 
makes it appear. What does seem in the highest 
degree improbable is that a body already decaying 
should have been restored to life; and we must 
assume that there is some mistake in the narrative 
in John xi. 39. Two of the nature-miracles (if such 
they are) have already been dealt with—the coin in 
the fish’s mouth, and the withering of the fig-tree. 
It is not imperative to assume a miracle from the 
narratives of the draught of fishes, for a surprisingly 
abundant catch is not an unknown occurrence for 


74 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


fishermen. If Jesus’ command was not the result 
of careful observation, it may be explained by a super- 
natural intuition on His part that there was a shoal 
of fish. But as the same kind of occurrence is told 
in Luke v. 1-11, and John xxi. 1-8, in the one Gospel 
in connection with Peter’s first call, and in the other 
with his restoration, and there is nothing correspond- 
ing in the record of Peter’s call in Matthew and even 
Mark, who transmitted what Peter had reported 
about the ministry of Jesus, we may have here a 
vagrant tradition of uncertain origin. ‘The stilling 
of the storm may be explained either as a supernatural 
intuition of Jesus that the storm was abating, or as 
an instant answer of God to the prayer of Jesus 
implicit in the words ‘ Peace, be still,’ which could 
not have been addressed to inanimate, senseless winds 
and waves, but expressed His triumphant certainty. 
The walking of Jesus on the water offers more serious 
difficulty. Mark, Peter’s reporter, says nothing about 
Peter’s attempt to join his master (Matt. xiv. 28-32), 
and the Fourth Gospel does not reproduce that part 
of the story. Only if we assume that the * beloved 
disciple’? was John the son of Zebedee, can we claim 
that that Gospel offers us an independent testimony 
regarding the occurrence. The narrative itself shows 
the state of terror in which the disciples were, so that 
they mistook Jesus for an apparition (Mark vi. 49, 
Matt. xiv. 26). As Mark reports that ‘ Jesus would 
have passed by them’ (v. 48), the motive of the action 
is obscured. If they were in such danger and terror, 
that He must at once be in their midst, what was the 
reason for such action? It must be conceded that 
the condition of the disciples did not qualify them to 
give a coherent account of what actually did take 
place. We cannot pronounce the miracle impossible, 
but the account is not convincing, and no adequate 
reason is offered for Jesus’ thus raising Himself above 
those human limitations which give reality to the 
Incarnation. The story of the feeding of the four 
thousand (Mark viii. 1-9, Matt. xv. 32-389) may be 


oe 
4 


regarded as a doublet of the story of the feeding of 7 


> a i eae 


THE WORK OF CHRIST oD 


the five thousand (Mark vi. 32-44, Matt. xiv. 13-21, 
Luke ix. 10-17, John vi. 1-18). ‘It is,’ says Dr. 
Headlam,! ‘another account of the same event. 
There is a remarkable similarity between the two 
stories, but that of the five thousand has all the 
vividness which characterises a Marecan narrative, 
while that of the four thousand is singularly bald. 
Apart from this the two stories (except for the 
numbers) are almost identical. Then we notice that 
the second story is narrated as if there had been no 
similar event previous to it, and that while the first 
story takes its proper place in the narrative, the 
second story seems quite unconnected with what 
precedes it.’ The difficulty of this narrative lies for 
us in conceiving what did take place. The report 
seems circumstantial, but it fails us just where we 
would like information most. When did the multi- 
plication take place—in the hands of Jesus as He 
blessed, of His disciples as they distributed, or of the 
multitude as they received ? When was an increase 
of the quantity observed ? If there was indeed such, 
how does the witness fail to describe it? It is not 
surprising that various solutions of the problem have 
been offered, as that the people were so sustained and 
satisfied with the teaching of Jesus that they forgot 
their hunger, and felt that they had been fed, or that 
Jesus and His disciples set so good an example of 
generosity by sharing with others what they had that 
other stores of food were produced and divided, so 
that all got enough. The writer’s own standpoint in 
this matter has been well expressed by Dr. Headlam.? 
‘A miracle and a wonderful event may have taken 
place in many ways, and we need not disbelieve it 
because our imagination cannot picture to ourselves 
the way in which it could have happened. I would 
venture to suggest, therefore, that, exercising a certain 
amount of suspense of judgment, we should refuse 
to rule out the story on a priori grounds, as necessarily 
unnatural or impossible, and should recognise that 


1 The Life and Teaching of Jesus the Christ, p. 15. 
2 Op. cit., p. 278. 


“6 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


something occurred, so wonderful as to stir up the 
people in a remarkable way.’ He adds with reference 
to two narratives already considered: ‘1 would 
suggest also that we should not be too anxious to 
adopt a rationalistic explanation of the walking on 
the waves and the stilling of the storm, and should 
there also exercise a certain suspense of judgment. 
It is quite easy to devise rationalistic explanations, 
but they are really never convincing.’ One miracle 
remains for consideration, the turning of the water 
into wine at Cana (John ii. 1-11). That it is told only 
in the Fourth Gospel need not itself excite suspicion. 
That it lends itself to an allegorical interpretation as 
a symbol of the transforming of human life by the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ does not prove that the author 
invented the story with that intention, as no such 
meaning is in any way suggested. As there was no 
multiplication of substance, but only transformation, 
the same difficulty for our imagination does not exist 
as in respect to the miracle just discussed. The 
difficulty is rather here, that no adequate reason for 
the performance of such a miracle is given in the 
narrative. 

(e) While the writer is not prepared to abandon 
belief in the exercise of supernatural power by Jesus, 
either inherent in His Person or derived from God 
through prayer, in view of the difficulty which many 
Christian believers now experience in accepting the 
miracles as actual, valuable as the records are as 
illustrating the character of Jesus, he is convinced 
that it would be a mistake to treat belief in the 
miracles as a test of Christian faith. If Jesus’ miracles 
were answers of God to His prayers, they afford evi- 
dence of the efficacy of His prayers in their perfect 
accord with the Divine Will. What is involved in 
such answers to prayer as regards the relation of God 
to nature is a question which must be left unanswered 
until the doctrine of God in the next section of this 
volume is discussed, but the evidence in the Gospels 
that such answers were given is a datum which must 
not be overlooked in such a discussion. We may now 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 77 


pass from the subject of the miracles as illustrative 
of the teaching and example of Jesus to consider 
another aspect of His work which the miracles also 
illustrate—His Saviourhood. 

(3) In dealing with Jesus’ Saviourhood we do not 
exclude His teaching, example, or miracles. He saved 
from error by His truth, from sin by His example, 
from pain and grief and fear by His miracles. But 
what we are now to concentrate our attention upon is 
what He Himself conceived to be His distinctive 
vocation. That He knew Himself as Son of God has 
already been shown—that relation is primary in His 
consciousness; but how did He think of the mission 
from God to man, which was committed to Him as 
Son, and for which His Sonship qualified Him ? 

(i) At first He presented His universal vocation in 
a local, national, historical form. He accepted from 
Peter the confession of Messiahship (Matt. xvi. 17); He 
offered Himself to the Jewish nation as Messiah or 
Christ, the Anointed, in the significant act of the entry 
into Jerusalem (xxi. 1-11); and He recognised that 
He must die as Jewish Messiah, rejected by His people, 
if He were to become the world’s Saviour (John xii. 
24). As He did not think of the Messiahship as an 
earthly kingship, a victorious, prosperous, and 
righteous reign on the throne of David as a scion 
of the house of David, we need not deal at all with 
the Messianic hope in the strict sense of the term. 
In His Temptation, and throughout His ministry, 
He rejected the popular expectations, even though ~ 
based on prophetic predictions of Messiahship. Owing 
to these false views He did not proclaim His Messiah- 
ship even to His disciples; and when Peter confessed 
that he at least had found this hope fulfilled, Jesus 
still enjoined silence, and at once began to present 
an ideal of His vocation no way corresponding to the 
expectations of even the disciples (Matt. xvi. 21-28). 
Only at the very end, when the disclosure of Messiah- 
ship would not involve the result He did not desire, 
did He in His triumphal entry claim Messiahship, but 
of a kind that disappointed all popular hopes. He 


“8 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


came to Jerusalem, not as conqueror delivering by 
His power, but in all lowliness to save by sacrifice 
(xxi. 1-11). 

(ii) A more universal, permanent, and human con- 
ception of His vocation is indicated by the title which 
He chose for Himself, the Son of man. Much has 
been written as to the source and the significance of 
this title; but the writer can here only give his own 
conclusion after careful consideration of what has 
been written. The term Son of man is not merely a 
synonym for man; by it Jesus meant to express 
something distinctive. . It is in most of its applica- 
tions to be explained by the eighth psalm. After a dis- 
cussion of the relevant passages the writer has stated 
elsewhere! that, just as in the psalm, ‘ Humiliation 
is as prominent as exaltation, humility as dignity.’ 
‘Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that Jesus 
meant by the use of this title so to assert His similarity 
to other men as to deny His superiority. It was 
because there was no natural identity that it was 
necessary for Him thus to intimate His voluntary 
identification with the race. A sense of difference 
of moral character, of religious consciousness, of 
historical position and function, is expressed, as well as 
the desire for union with the race, so that He might 
become to it the channel of divine grace.’ While 
we recognise that the terms are inadequate, we may 
say that in the use of this title Jesus claimed typical 
and vicarious manhood. Realising in Himself man- 
hood as it ought to be, He identified Himself with 
mankind as it is. There can be no doubt that in His 
answer to the High Priest’s challenge whether He 
were the Christ or not (Mark xiv. 62), He had in view 
the statement of Daniel (vil. 18, 14): ‘ I saw in the 
night visions, and, behold, there came with the clouds 
of heaven one like unto a son of man, and He came 
even. to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him 
near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, 
and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, 
and languages should serve Him: His dominion is an 

1 Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, pp. 805-7. 


\ 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 79 


everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and 
His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.’ Son 
of man is not here an individual title, but a description 
of a symbolic figure, standing for a collective concep- 
tion, the saints of God, whose human reign is to 
succeed the brute reign of the oppressors of the saints, 
symbolised by beasts. Even if Jesus was familiar 
with the Similitudes of the Book of Enoch, we are not 
warranted in determining the significance of the term 
on His lips by that apocalyptic representation. It 
may be it was that book which led Him to individualise 
that collective conception of Daniel; but to assume 
that Jesus took over into His own consciousness of 
His vocation what that writing contains is altogether 
unjustified. We should rather discover this secret 
from His own words and deeds. | 

(11) The writer is convinced that Jesus’ view of His 
calling was determined by the ideal figure of the 
servant of Yahveh, especially as depicted in Isaiah li. 
When we read that passage the conclusion seems 
inevitable that in Him alone that ideal was realised. 
But what we must try to prove is that Jesus Himself 
set this purpose before Him to be fulfilled from the 
beginning of His ministry. (a) It is sometimes 
assumed that He began His ministry with the hope 
by His preaching to bring Israel to repentance and 
faith, and that it was only afterwards, when His 
popularity failed, that His thought turned towards 
suffering as the means of salvation. It is true that 
it was only after the confession of His Messiahship 
by Peter that He began to disclose His purpose to 
His disciples; but that fact is not a proof that it was 
only then that the purpose was formed. As the 
drama developed, it may well be that the tragedy 
was more clearly discerned in all its details: but that 
He looked for success, and was only led by failure to 
try the way of sorrow, is incredible.“;, We need not 
assume divine omniscience to explain His anticipa- 
tions. As the lad’s reply in the Temple shows, He was 
intent on the things of His Father (Luke i. 49, ev 
Tols Tov Ilatpds pov). In those quiet years of study 


80 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


and meditation in Nazareth till He began His work, 
He must have pursued the same quest, to know His 
Father’s will; and the Scriptures were available, if 
not in His home, yet in the synagogue. It was His 
insight that led Him to those passages which deal 
with the servant of Yahveh; and when He began his 
work, this was how He thought of it. Possible it is 
that He expected a larger number in the nation to 
believe, or even cherished the possibility of a national 
movement towards God; but that expectation, even 
if He had it, does not exclude the modified anticipa- 
tion that He thought of the nation as with Himself a 
martyr nation for the salvation of other peoples, as 
the prophet of the Exile had thought of it. Had the 
nation repented and believed, and then striven to 
realise this ideal in its whole life, in the world as it 
then was, could it have escaped martyrdom ? What 
may have deepened the tragedy for Him in the course 
of His ministry was the discovery that He would be 
alone in His martyrdom, forsaken even by the few 
disciples He had gathered around Him (Mark xiv. 27, 
John xvi. 82). Whether in this or some other form 
it does seem certain that His aim was to be the 
servant of Yahveh, although His filial consciousness 
rejected the term servant, and preferred to convey 
His sense of His oneness with the race He came to 
redeem by the title Son of man. 

(b) We must now prove this conclusion in detail. 
At His baptism He dedicated Himself to His vocation ; 
and in the record of it there are two indications of 
how He thought of it. He met the Baptist’s objec- 
tion: ‘I have need to be baptized of Thee, and 
comest Thou to me?’ with the words: ‘Suffer it 
now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteous- 
ness’ (Matt. ili. 14-15). The Servant who makes 
many righteous is Himself righteous; and He shows 
His righteousness in bearing their iniquities (Is. lin. 11). 
This was the righteousness He was fulfilling: He 
was, in vicarious love, being numbered with trans- 
gressors in sharing the baptism of repentance, though 
Himself sinless. As the Baptist’s remonstrance shows, 


THE WORK OF CHRIST si 


he had some knowledge of the character and purpose 
of Jesus, derived probably from previous conversa- 
tions. Only if Jesus had disclosed to Him His secret 
can we understand the declaration ascribed to the 
Baptist in the Fourth Gospel: ‘ Behold, the Lamb 
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!’ 
(John 1. 29), so unlike all else that he spoke about 
Jesus. The Servant is described as ‘a lamb that is 
led to the slaughter,’ and the words that follow 
reproduce the thought of the following verses (Is. liu. 
7-8). The voice from heaven that confirmed this 
dedication, ‘ Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am 
well pleased’ (Mark i. 11), recalls Isaiah xli. 1: ‘ Be- 
hold My servant, whom I uphold; My chosen, in 
whom My soul delighteth.? When Jesus began His 
ministry in Nazareth, it was a passage in Isaiah 1x1. 
1-2 which He read, and which He claimed to fulfil 
(Luke iv. 18-21). When He gave the first indication 
of coming separation from His disciples due to the 
inherent antagonism between His mission and Judaism 
(Mark i. 18-22), He used the figure of the Bridegroom 
which is also used in Isaiah Ixii. 5. It is surely more 
than a chance that He described Himself as the Good 
Shepherd (John x. 14), even as the prophet described 
God in His leading of His people (Is. xl. 11): * He shall 
feed His flock like a shepherd, He shall gather the 
lambs in His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and 
shall gently lead those that give suck.’ When the 
Baptist’s disciples came to ask Jesus if He were the 
Messiah or not, He referred their master to Isaiah 
xxxv. 6 and lxi. 1. In the healing ministry the First 
Gospel (Matt. viii. 17) finds a fulfilment of Isaiah’s 
words, ‘ Himself took our infirmities and bare our 
diseases’ (lili. 4), and in Jesus’ enjoining of silence 
on the healed a fulfilment of Isaiah xli. 1-4 (Matt. 
xii. 18-21). The Fourth Gospel quotes Isaiah li. 1 
as a prophecy of the unbelief of the people (John xii. 
38). Hach Synoptist finds a prediction of some 
detail of the Passion in the same portion of the 
Scriptures, the entry into Jerusalem (Matt. xxi. 5, 
Is. Ixii. 11), the crucifixion between two thieves 
. 


80 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


and meditation in Nazareth till He began His work, 
He must have pursued the same quest, to know His 
Father’s will; and the Scriptures were available, if 
not in His home, yet in the synagogue. It was His 
insight that led Him to those passages which deal 
with the servant of Yahveh ; and when He began his 
work, this was how He thought of it. Possible it is 
that He expected a larger number in the nation to 
believe, or even cherished the possibility of a national 
movement towards God; but that expectation, even 
if He had it, does not exclude the modified anticipa- 
tion that He thought of the nation as with Himself a 
martyr nation for the salvation of other peoples, as 
the prophet of the Exile had thought of it. Had the 
nation repented and believed, and then striven to 
realise this ideal in its whole life, in the world as it 
then was, could it have escaped martyrdom? What 
may have deepened the tragedy for Him in the course 
of His ministry was the discovery that He would be 
alone in His martyrdom, forsaken even by the few 
disciples He had gathered around Him (Mark xiv. 27, 
John xvi. 32). Whether in this or some other form 
it does seem certain that His aim was to be the 
servant of Yahveh, although His filial consciousness 
rejected the term servant, and preferred to convey 
His sense of His oneness with the race He came to 
redeem by the title Son of man. 

(b) We must now prove this conclusion in detail. 
At His baptism He dedicated Himself to His vocation ; 
and in the record of it there are two indications of 
how He thought of it. He met the Baptist’s objec- 
tion: ‘I have need to be baptized of Thee, and 
comest Thou to me?’ with the words: ‘Suffer it 
now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteous- 
ness’ (Matt. ii. 14-15). The Servant who makes 
many righteous is Himself righteous; and He shows 
His righteousness in bearing their iniquities (Is. li. 11). 
This was the righteousness He was fulfilling: He 
was, in vicarious love, being numbered with trans- 
gressors in sharing the baptism of repentance, though 
Himself sinless. As the Baptist’s remonstrance shows, 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 81 


he had some knowledge of the character and purpose 
of Jesus, derived probably from previous conversa- 
tions. Only if Jesus had disclosed to Him His secret 
can we understand the declaration ascribed to the 
Baptist in the Fourth Gospel: ‘ Behold, the Lamb 
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!’ 
(John i. 29), so unlike all else that he spoke about 
Jesus. The Servant is described as ‘a lamb that is 
led to the slaughter,’ and the words that follow 
reproduce the thought of the following verses (Is. liu. 
7-8). The voice from heaven that confirmed this 
dedication, ‘ Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am 
well pleased’ (Mark i. 11), recalls Isaiah xhi. 1: ‘ Be- 
hold My servant, whom I uphold; My chosen, in 
whom My soul delighteth.’ When Jesus began His 
ministry in Nazareth, it was a passage in Isaiah Ixi. 
1-2 which He read, and which He claimed to fulfil 
(Luke iv. 18-21). When He gave the first indication 
of coming separation from His disciples due to the 
inherent antagonism between His mission and Judaism 
(Mark ii. 18-22), He used the figure of the Bridegroom 
which is also used in Isaiah Ixil. 5. It is surely more 
than a chance that He described Himself as the Good 
Shepherd (John x. 14), even as the prophet described 
God in His leading of His people (Is. xl. 11): ‘ He shall 
feed His flock like a shepherd, He shall gather the 
lambs in His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and 
shall gently lead those that give suck.’ When the 
Baptist’s disciples came to ask Jesus if He were the 
Messiah or not, He referred their master to Isaiah 
xxxv. 6 and lxi. 1. In the healing ministry the First 
Gospel (Matt. viii. 17) finds a fulfilment of Isaiah’s 
words, ‘ Himself took our infirmities and bare our 
diseases’ (liii. 4), and in Jesus’ enjoining of silence 
on the healed a fulfilment of Isaiah xli. 1-4 (Matt. 
xii. 18-21). The Fourth Gospel quotes Isaiah lii. 1 
as a prophecy of the unbelief of the people (John xu. 
38). Hach Synoptist finds a prediction of some 
detail of the Passion in the same portion of the 
Scriptures, the entry into Jerusalem (Matt. xxi. 5, 
Is. Ixii. 11), the crucifixion between two thieves 
. 


82 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(Mark xv. 28, Is. lil. 12), so also Luke xxi. 37, 
Is. liii. 12. The saying of Jesus in Matthew xx. 28, 
‘Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom 
for many,’ gains fuller content from what is said 
about the servant in Isaiah liii. 4-6. Owing to the 
unbelief of the disciples even after the confession, 
Jesus could not freely disclose what was in His heart 
to them, and what He said was not accurately re- 
membered in its details, as the very summary form 
of the three specific announcements of the Passion 
show (Mark viii. 81, ix. 31, x. 32-34). Had there 
been fuller reports, we should probably find more 
numerous connections than we have now indicated. 
What has been proved, however, warrants us in using 
Isaiah liii. as filling out the content of Jesus’ con- 
sciousness of His vocation. 
~ (ce) How soon His mind was turned towards the 
sacrifice which lay before Him has been shown in the 
preceding paragraph. After the crisis at Caesarea 
Philippi His mind was more constantly absorbed. The 
Transfiguration, which may be regarded as an objective 
vision, was a confirmation of Jesus’ purpose, and a 
challenge to the unwilling disciples to submit them- 
selves to that purpose. The appearances of the 
representatives of law and prophecy in converse with 


Him in regard to His ‘exodus which He was about to | 


accomplish at Jerusalem ’ (Luke ix. 31), stamped the 
divine seal on His announcement of His Passion, and 
no less of the Resurrection which was to follow it. In 
the voice from heaven the divine approval confirmed 
the divine authority of Jesus (v. 35). Another pro- 


phetic association for the death, although entirely 


consistent with all the references to the Servant of 


Yahveh, is found in the words of Jesus at the Last | 


Supper, ‘ This is My blood of the covenant, which is 
shed for many unto remission of sins ’ (Matt. xxvi. 28). 
As the Covenant at Sinai was not a covenant of grace, 
but of law, this must be another covenant; and, 
whether the word new was used or not (as in 1 Cor, xi. 


25), the reference was undoubtedly to Jeremiah’s 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 83 


prophecy (xxxi. 82-384). The death is represented as 
a covenant-sacrifice. In Isaiah li. 10 the death of 
the servant is represented as a sin offering. We must 
not commit the error, however, which the older 
typology committed of attempting to interpret the 
death of Christ by means of the Old Testament 
sacrificial system. The Epistle to the Hebrews ought 
to have warned us against the mistake of trying to 
explain the substance by the shadow. There are 
three other points of view from which Jesus presents 
His death to us: as a martyrdom, a following of the 
path of duty whithersoever it might lead (Matt. xvi. 
24), as an offering of love—for Jesus surely saw more 
than an external connection between Mary’s gift of 
love and the Gospel of His death (xxvi. 13)—and as 
a crime (xxi. 39-41). 

All these allusions of Jesus to His death do help 
us in some measure to understand how He thought 
of it. The crime of the Jewish people in His death 
weighed heavily upon His heart, for He knew that 
it meant its doom. How revealing are the words 
which He puts on the lips of the owner of the vine- 
yard when sending his son to the husbandmen, 
‘They will reverence my son’ (v. 37)! It was a 
surprise and wonder to Him that man’s sin could 
thus refuse and resist God’s goodness and grace in 
Him. In obedience to God, as the Cross appointed 
to Him to bear, and in love to man, prodigal as was 
Mary’s offering, He suffered Himself to be the victim 
of the crime, nay, even He forced the issue upon the 
Jewish people, while He grieved for the judgment 
that His act was inflicting because He recognised a 
necessity not to be avoided or escaped. Only by the 
crowning act of ministry in His death as a ransom 
(Matt. xx. 28) could men be delivered from their 
bondage to evil; only in His death as a sacrifice 
could the new relation of God and man, full forgive- 
ness and free fellowship, be established. But the 
words ransom and sacrifice (blood means that and can 
mean nothing else here) do not themselves indicate 
to us what His death meant to Him, and how to it 


84 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


were related man’s forgiveness, freedom, fellowship 
with God, and we must turn to the records of Geth- 
semane and Calvary to discover if they disclose the 
secret to us. 

(d) If we accept, as we may, as authentic history 
the difference which in Matthew’s record is reported 
in regard to the first and the second prayer, a doubt 
was removed from the mind of Jesus, and a certainty 
gained. What was the cup which His first prayer 
assumes can be removed, and His second recognises 
can not (Matt. xxvi. 39 and 42)? All He had said 
before excludes the conjecture that it was death itself 
that He shrank from and wanted to escape. The 
conviction that He must die was too deeply rooted 
to be shaken even by fierce gusts of emotion. It 
would have been unworthy of Him to fear death as 
a natural occurrence ; for He by His grace has enabled 
men and women to face death in no less horrible 
forms in fidelity to Him. It was because now He 
realised what death might be to Him as a spiritual 
experience that He shrank from it. In His agony 
in Gethsemane He anticipated the darkness and 
desolation of soul which fell on Him on Calvary. It 
was worthy of Him as Son that He should shrink 
from and even seek to avoid that interruption of His 
filial communion with God which death now seemed 
to Him to threaten. It is He who by His Resurrection 
has taken from those who believe in Him the terror 
of death as a spiritual experience ; but He in the days 
of His flesh, in the realisation of human sin, and the 
judgment of God on sin which came upon Him in 
those last hours, thought of death as involving so 
great a loss. He seems to have realised that to make 
the sacrifice of His obedience to God and His com- 
passion for man complete, He must experience death 
at the worst which man had ever feared—the loss of 
God’s presence. Only thus could He * taste death 
for every man’ (Heb. ii. 9). No other writing in the 
New Testament shows such insight into the content 
of the sacrifice of Christ as the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
What Jesus dreaded in Gethsemane and endured on 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 85 


Calvary is truly interpreted in these words, ‘ Who in 
the days of His flesh, having offered up prayers and 
supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him 
that was able to save Him out of death (é« davdrov), 
and having been heard for His godly fear, though He 
was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which 
He suffered; and having been made perfect, He 
became unto all them that obey Him the author of 
eternal salvation’ (v. 7-9). It was indeed a godly 
fear (amd 7s ev\aBelas) that He should dread this 
interruption of His filial communion, and yet His 
obedience as Son was tested to the uttermost, the 
ereatest sacrifice for Him being accepted. He was 
indeed heard and saved out of death, for the dread 
experience had ended before death came, and He 
passed into the unseen in self-committal to His 
Father (Luke xxni. 46). Himself sinless, He yet 
experienced death as God’s judgment on sin, and in 
so enduring it He conveyed to ‘mankind sinners’ God’s 
forgiveness of sin. The love which assures forgive- 
ness of sin no less endures judgment on sin, and so 
approves itself holy love. This to the writer seems 
to be the meaning of the agony of the Garden and the 
desolation of the Cross. Any less and lower interpre- 
tation is not great enough for the moral and spiritual 
greatness of Jesus Christ. To say that it was common 
human emotion in the prospect and the endurance of 
death which so overwhelmed Him, or, because He 
used the words of a psalmist in His cry of dereliction, 
to measure His experience by the psalmists, is to trifle 
with reality. As Son of God and Son of man such an 
experience was not individual, but must be inter- 
preted in relation both to God and to man, and His 
relationship to both. 

(e) To discuss what doctrine of the Atonement may 
be based on this experience of Jesus, in which His 
fulfilment of His vocation was completed, belongs to 
a later chapter; here we are concerned only with such 
psychological interpretation of the experience as will 
make it appear more intelligible. In this experience 
there culminates His twofold relation to ‘mankind 


86 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


sinners,’ which can be traced throughout the whole of 
His ministry. On the one hand He was the friend 
of outcasts and sinners, and in His sympathy and 
compassion identified Himself with them. Unlike 
the righteous men of His own people, He made their 
lot His own in love. Because He was not ashamed to 
call the sinners His brethren, He was despised and 
rejected of men who thought themselves good and 
godly. On the other hand, however, He was Himself 
‘holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,’ as 
Himself knowing no sin. He never, identifying Him- 
self with sinful mankind, shared signs of repentance, 
made confession of sin, or prayed for forgiveness. 
In respect of the fact of sin as personal act He stood 
not on the side of man, but on the side of God, judging 
and forgiving sin. In the tenderness of His forgive- 
ness of the penitent we must not lose sight of the 
severity of His condemnation of the self-righteous. 
In forgiveness of and judgment on sin He identified 
Himself with God, as in compassion and sympathy 
He identified Himself with ‘mankind sinners.’ Because 
love is by its very nature vicarious, 7.e. puts itself im 
the place of the beloved, He both judged and forgave 
sin as God does, and He endured the consequences 
of sin, suffering, sorrow, shame, struggle, as man does. 
In the Cross this self-identification with God and man 
was brought to its highest intensity. The occasion, 
on which man’s sin was exposed in its worst antagonism 
to God’s holy love, made not only possible, but even 
inevitable, that as the Son of God He should approve 
God’s judgment on sin in death, and as Son of man 
should Himself endure that judgment, not by any 
artificial substitution, but by love’s self-identification 
with God and with man. He so loved God that He 
condemned sin with God; He so loved man that He 
endured its doom with man; and His experience 
with man was deeper than man can share, because 
He saw in that experience what God sees. In peni- 
tence man identifies himself with Christ in His judg- 
ment of sin, both as approved and endured by Him, 
and in faith He identifies Himself with Christ also in 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 87 


accepting the forgiveness He conveys. We must 
beware of saying that Jesus felt guilty, or was held 
guilty, or was punished instead of us, for these terms 
are inapplicable to the sinless and holy, and they 
belong to the law-court, which by its analogies can 
only mislead: all we dare say is that His vicarious 
love endured all the consequences of sin, regarding 
them not only as man may, but as God does. We 
must not say that God’s wrath rested upon Him, or 
that God forsook Him. He was the Son beloved and 
approved, even when His intense, overwhelming 
realisation of death as God’s judgment on sin excluded 
from His immediate consciousness the sense of God’s 
presence and favour: for, as human, His conscious- 
ness was subject to the limitation that an absorbing 
emotion excluded other contents. As soon as that 
emotion was relieved, the sense of God’s relation to 
Him was at once restored. As a historical occurrence 
the death of Christ must first of all be psychologically 
interpreted before we can attempt any theological 
interpretation, and this is all the writer, acutely 
conscious of the imperfection of his endeavour, has 
here attempted to do. Im closing the treatment of 
this subject he must express his conviction, a con- 
viction that has been deepened by the meditation of 
many years, that the fact of Christ 1s mutilated, and 
the grace of Christ is obscured by any interpretation 
of the Cross that does not recognise, as the writer’s 
study of the Gospels has forced him to recognise, that 
not in the teaching, example, or companionship, but 
mainly in His sacrifice He fulfilled His vocation. 

(4) This chapter would not be complete without a 
brief statement regarding the Resurrection, and its 
significance for the work of Jesus. 

(i) When Jesus foretold His death, He also spoke of 
His Resurrection. He did not contemplate His death 
as an end of His relation to God or to man, but as a 
condition of a wider activity for God among men. 
This conviction He expressed in an analogy: ‘ Except 
a erain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth 
by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit’ 


38 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(John xii. 24). Even if reflection blend with remini- 
scence in the report of the Discourse in the Upper 
Room (John xiii.-xvil.) we are warranted in assuming 
that the experience of the disciples was the fulfilment 
of the promise of the Master. The Transfiguration, 
in confirming His purpose to die, also gave Him a 
prevision of the glory that should follow. Again the 
Epistle to the Hebrews displays a truly inspired 
insight, when it declares that He * for the joy that was 
set. before Him endured the Cross, despising shame ’ 
(xii. 2). It was not so clear and full a knowledge as 
would lessen the trial, but it was a sure and strong 
enough faith to make the trial endurable. For the 
disciples the Resurrection brought a renewal of faith, 
and a recovery of hope: it alone made the death 
tolerable; and it was only in the light of the Risen 
Lord that they began to discover its meaning. The 
Cross would have remained an unrelieved tragedy 
had not the Crucified risen and ‘showed Himself 
alive after His passion by many proofs’ (Acts 1. 3). 
Even those who deny the fact of the Resurrection 
admit that the belief in the Resurrection was the 
foundation of the Christian Church, and try by various 
theories to explain the belief without accepting the 
fact. To Paul the thought of the Messiah as having 
died the accursed death of the Cross was a blasphemy 
so intolerable that with utmost violence he sought to 
stamp it out; and it was only the certainty of the 
Resurrection that forcibly turned him from unbelief 
to faith (1 Cor. xv. 8, ‘an abortive birth,’ oamepel ro 
éxrpdépat.). As the purpose of this volume is not 
critical or historical, but theological, the writer must 
simply ask his readers to accept the assurance, that 
after a candid and careful study of the relevant 
literature he has reached the conviction that the- 
evidence for the fact is adequate, and that the theories _ 
which seek to explain away the fact are untenable. 
The statement in 1 Cor. xv. 1-11 itself would suffice 
for this conviction. How completely the reality of 
the Christian faith and hope depended on the fact _ 
is shown by Paul in vv, 12-384, | 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 89 


(1) What must be here discussed, however, is the 
nature of the Resurrection, for there is a common 
tendency to-day to deny the complete resurrection 
of Jesus, and to substitute for it what is miscalled 
a spiritual resurrection, for it seems to amount to 
no more than a survival of the soul, while the body 
was left to perish. To insist on the completeness of 
the victory over death is to expose oneself to a charge 
of materialism. Regarding this charge the writer will 
content himself with saying that to him it seems 
materialism to assume that God had not the power to 
transform a natural body into a spiritual (to use Paul’s 
distinction), especially in the case of Him who is 
typical ideal man, the first-fruits from the grave, the 
first-born among many brethren, the beginning of the 
new creation of God, and not materialism to believe 
that matter is the creation, and so remains under the 
control of spirit. The more recent theories of physics 
should make us hesitate about setting rigid bounds 
to the possible transformation of matter as our senses 
apprehend it. To substitute the Greek idea of the 
immortality of the soul for the Hebrew idea of the 
complete restoration of the human personality, and 
vet to continue using the word resurrection, is to palter 
with words. On this view the appearances of Jesus 
were deceptive, for they were corporeal appearances, 
and by appeal to the senses of sight, hearing, and 
touch were seemingly intended to give assurance of 
corporeal reality. On this view, too, the appearances 
must be regarded as subjective hallucinations, or as 
manifestations similar to those that the spiritualists 
claim to be able to secure from the dead. Such evi- 
dence as we possess in the Gospels forbids the assump- 
tion of an identity of physical attributes. It was the 
Same person with a changed body. Mary mistook 
Him for the gardener, and only recognised Him by 
the tone of His voice (John xx. 15, 16). The two on 
the way to Emmaus knew Him not until a familiar 
gesture recalled Him (Luke xxiv. 31). He appeared 
in the midst of the disciples when the doors were 
closed (John xx. 19). To overcome unbelief and to 


90 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


ensure faith there seem to have been occasional 
manifestations to sense which might be regarded as 
not permanent characteristics. We move here in a 
region of conjecture; and yet the conclusion seems 
justified that the natural body had been transformed 
into the spiritual body. Whether the transition was 
gradual and completed at the Ascension, as the 
records in the Gospels would at least suggest, or sudden, 
as Paul anticipates for those who may be alive at the 
final resurrection (1 Cor. xv. 51-53), we need not 
attempt to decide. We must admit that we are here 
seeking a way amid apocalyptic thought, which 
Christianity inherited from Judaism, and in which 
our minds cannot be thoroughly at home: but. of 
this the writer himself is quite convinced, that to the 
completeness of the Christian faith in Jesus the Christ 
our Lord there does belong the belief, which the 
historical evidence does not challenge, but to which 
it gives some support, that the victory of Jesus was a 
complete victory, that the whole personality lives as 
the promise and pledge of the believer’s complete 
deliverance from death. 

(11) What the Resurrection means is that the work 
of Jesus the Christ our Lord was not ended at death, 
and is not merely continued by a posthumous tradi- 
tion and influence, but that He Himself, and no other, 
in the fulness of His real divine-human personality 
works on. As it is not an activity of which there are 
any sensible tokens, but only spiritual evidence, we 
may say that it is by His Spirit or the Spirit of God 
that He still teaches, succours, comforts, saves, and 
blesses men. The record of His earthly ministry is 
invaluable as indicating so clearly the content and 
character of His person and work, that it can serve 
as a test of every historical movement which claims 
to be inspired by Him. While His activity is freed 
from the conditions and limitations of the earthly life, 
its purpose is the same as was that of His ministry 
among men in the days of His flesh. It is through 
His Church that the sensible manifestation of His 
Presence and Power is now made; hence it is His 


THE WORK OF CHRIST 91 


body, His necessary complement, as He is Himself 
in and by it completing His vocation (Eph. i. 23). 
But it can serve as His body only as it is realising 
that He, the Head, is diffusing His own hfe through 
all the members of that body. There are various 
stages in apprehending the meaning of Christ, vary- 
ing degrees in appreciating His worth, but it can be 
said confidently that the distinctive, typical, crucial 
Christian conviction is that of personal experience of 
a personally present and active Saviour and Lord. 
Thus Jesus rises above, and reaches beyond the realm 
of temporary history, and becomes a permanent and 
universal reality, so immediately and intimately re- 
lated to the infinite and eternal God, that by Christian 
faith God is not apprehended apart from Him, but 
in Him. The justification to reason of this faith must 
be reserved to the constructive section of this volume, 
but what must now be affirmed as an essential part 
of the fact of Christ, which is the enduring and world- 
wide object of faith in Him, is just this, that in His 
person and work He is exalted above the limitations 
of time and space. This is the meaning of the sym- 
bolic phrases of His ascension, His exaltation, His 
session at the right hand of God, His title as Lord, 
‘the name above every other name,’ the title which 
pious Jews substituted in the reading of the Scriptures 
for the covenant name, Yahveh, and which believing 
Christians found no difficulty in bestowing on Jesus 
the Christ, after His Resurrection. It is in this world- 
wide and age-long Saviourhood and Lordship that the 
work of Jesus is consummated. 


CHAPTER III 


THE APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE AND 
INTERPRETATION 


Ture work of Christ was completed in His continued 
presence and power*in His community. The Resur- 
rection was followed by Pentecost. When in medita- 
tion and prayer the company of believers reached the 
certainty that Jesus the Christ lived and reigned as 
Lord, a holy enthusiasm and energy possessed it. 
There were abnormal as well as normal manifestations 
of this fulness of life in the Spirit of God, phenomena 
similar to those which have been witnessed at religious 
revivals. This enthusiasm and energy were accom- 
panied by a very intense and confident expectation 
of the Second Advent of Christ, His sensible mani- 
festation on the clouds of heaven with hosts of angels 
in glory and power as Judge of the world and Saviour 
of His Church. These two features—the being filled 
with the Spirit, and the looking for God’s Son from 
heaven—were characteristic of the Apostolic Age, 
and were even within that age being gradually trans- 
formed. Paul without depreciating the spiritual gifts 
finds ‘the more excellent way’ of Christian life in 
love (1 Cor. xii. 31, xiii. 1), and for the hope of sur- 
viving till the Second Advent (1 Cor. xv. 51) he finds 
compensation when the fulfilment seemed less certain 
to him, in the conviction that to be absent from the 
body is to be at home with the Lord (2 Cor. v. 8). In 
the Johannine writings this transformation of primi- 
tive Christianity, as it was in the first generation of 
believers, into its more permanent and universal form 
is completed. As this volume is neither a History of 
the Apostolic Church, nor a Theology of the New 


Testament, but an attempt at a constructive state- 
92 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 93 


ment of the Christian faith for the thought and the 
life of to-day, it is not at all necessary to deal any 
further with these passing phases of Christian belief 
and life; but as the Pauline and Johannine writings 
do enshrine what has permanent and universal signi- 
ficance and value for Christian faith, this chapter 
must be restricted to an exposition and estimate of 
the contribution of these two great Christians to our 
understanding and our prizing of the grace of the 
Lord Jesus Christ; and in regard to both of them, 
what is to be insisted on is this, that we are dealing 
‘with a real personal experience of Christ’s activity 
as Saviour and Lord, and not merely with a speculative 
interpretation of the common Christian tradition. 
From whatever source the terms used in setting forth 
their thoughts may have been borrowed, both used 
the terms to express what was real to them, the reality 
of Christ as they knew Him in their own personal 
experience; and accordingly the interpretation can 
appear intelligible only as the experience is regarded 
as credible. 


I 


Two errors in regard to Paul must be carefully 
avoided. We must not, with orthodox dogmatics, 
altogether ignore the temporal and local elements in 
his theology, and seek to impose all he wrote as 
authoritative at all times and places for Christian 
thought and life; and we must not, with modernist 
scholarship, treat him as merely a product of his own 
age and surroundings, and resolve his theology into 
a mixture of Jewish dogmatism and Greek speculation. 
He did not cease to be a Jewish rabbi when he became 
a Christian apostle, and his Gentile environment was 
not without effect on his ideas and ideals; we must 
not reject these influences on his theology as neces- 
sarily valueless, but must test their value. What 
makes him authoritative for the Christian Church 
to-day is his real, original, typical experience of Christ 
as Saviour and Lord; for what Christ was to him 


04 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Christ has been to other great Christian personalities 
who stand in the Pauline succession of faith (Augustine, 
Luther, Wesley) ; and even if the majority of Christian 
believers cannot rise to the same height, the realisation 
of the possibility in even a few must be accepted as 
evidence of what Christ really is and does to those 
whose faith responds adequately to His grace. 

(1) What was distinctive of Paul’s experience was 
his personal communion with the Risen Lord. 

(i) It was as Risen that Christ manifested Himself 
to him on the way to Damascus, and it was in the 
light of that vision that he walked and worked. For 
him the reality of his apostleship, his authority to 
found and direct churches, depended on his having 
seen Christ no less than the other apostles. On his 
ecstatic visions we need not lay stress, as he himself 
does not (2 Cor. xi. 1); but what was typical was his 
vivid sense of the presence of Christ, and his confidence ' 
of direct communion. His threefold prayer for de- 
liverance from the stake in his flesh was answered in 
what he claimed as an immediate communication 
from the Lord (vv. 8-9). We must return to his 
exposition of the Cross of Christ as propitiation, re- 
demption, and reconciliation. That doctrine did 
remove his own difficulties and perplexities, for he 
too needed for not only the satisfaction of his mind, 
but also the repose of his heart, the conviction that 
God is righteous in reckoning righteous all who 
have faith in Jesus (Rom. iii. 26); and we should 
altogether misunderstand him if we supposed that 
doctrine to be only an accommodation to Jewish ideas 
he did not himself share. Nevertheless, what was 
distinctive of him is expressed rather in his declaration: 
‘I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet 
no longer I, but Christ liveth in me: and that life 
which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith 
which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave 
Himself up for me’ (Gal. 11. 20). 

(11) The two facts which were essential to his theology 
were the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. By the 
Resurrection Christ was ‘ instituted Son of God with 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 95 


power’ (Rom. 1. 4), and received the name above 
every other name, the title of Lord (Phil. u. 9-11). 
It was the living Son of God in power who was the 
object of Paul’s faith, a faith which was an intimate 
personal union. The Resurrection also made the 
Crucifixion tolerable for him; otherwise the death 
on the Cross would have remained for him accursed, 
and the assertion of the Messiahship of the Crucified 
a blasphemy. Because it was the Risen Lord who 
had so died, Paul had to find in the death a meaning 
and a worth congruous with what, for his faith, the 
living Christ was. These two facts also were the 
moulds into which his own life was cast; its negative 
aspect of repentance for, and renunciation of sin was 
crucifixion with Christ, and its positive of aspiration 
and achievement of holiness was resurrection with 
Christ. It was his experience of union with Christ 
that had its inevitable result in his character of con- 
formity to Christ. 

(ii) This characteristic of his Christian personality 
has been often described as his faith - mysttcism. 
Mysticism it is, if all immediate contact and intimate 
communion of the soul with God is to be so described ; 
but if mysticism is what Neo-Platonism or Indian 
piety thinks it to be, a relation of the soul in ecstasy 
or trance with the essence of deity in the realm of the 
super-conscious, Paul is not a mystic. It was in the 
conscious exercise of faith that he found God in the 
no less real, because invisible, personality of Jesus 
Christ, and this relation of dependence and submission 
issued in such an activity of Christ by His Spirit as 
conformed him in character to that personality. 
Paul had what have often been claimed as the dis- 
tinctively mystical experiences of visions and voices ; 
but for him these were not primary, but altogether 
subordinate to the personal relation of the sinner 
saved by faith in the Lord and Saviour, who ever 
mediated the love of God to him, and whose presence 
was manifest in him in the enlightening and renewing 
Spirit. That Paul had an exceptional receptivity for, 
and responsiveness to the divine reality cannot be 


96 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


questioned. There has been none in the record of 
Christian faith who excelled him in the certainty and 
the confidence of his communion with Christ, and in 
the effectiveness of that communion in the transfor- 
mation of his personality. But it must not be, 
therefore, assumed that in this respect he should be 
regarded as solitary. If in less degree, yet still in 
reality such a relation to Christ is the typical relation, 
an aspiration for, if not an achievement of, all believers, 
possible by God’s grace according to the measure of 
faith. 

(2) Paul’s theology is the interpretation of his 
experience with such ideas and terms as his Jewish 
inheritance and education and his Gentile environ- 
ment provided. If it be remembered that in his 
Kpistles he is combating error, it will be conceded 
that that theology is not determined solely by his 
experience seeking self-expression, but is influenced 
not only as regards the language used, but also as 
regards the conceptions so expressed, by the occasion. 
In Galatians and Romans he is defending his Gospel 
against Judaism, and in Colossians and Ephesians 
against an incipient enosticism; accordingly we 
cannot regard all in his theology as simply an in- 
tellectual exposition of his own distinctive experience ; 
in form at least his statement of truth was affected by 
the error he was seeking to refute. His discussion 
about the relation of the Law and the Gospel, while 
of personal interest to him, does not express what was 
vital in his experience. How far he shared the angel- 
ology of Colossians and Ephesians we cannot deter- 
mine, but what was alone vital to him was the absolute 
supremacy of Christ in the realm of the spirit. The 
writer is convinced that, although Paul could not 
altogether escape the influence of the Gentile environ- 
ment amid which he was educated as a boy and 
youth, and afterwards moved as a preacher of the 
Gospel, yet he was almost exclusively a Jew; and, 
therefore, when an explanation of any feature of his 
thought can be offered from the standpoint of his 
Jewish inheritance and education, it seems to be 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 97 


altogether a mistake to prefer recourse to his Gentile 
environment. Able and scholarly as is the book of 
Dr. W. Morgan on The Religion and Theology of Paul, 
it fails in two respects: (i) it does not adequately 
recognise the originality of Paul’s religion in the 
distinctiveness of his personal experience ; and (1i) it 
is too ready to resort to current pagan ideas of religion 
to explain what the experience adequately accounts 
for, or what can be traced to the Jewish influences. 
Paul’s sense of union and communion with Christ is 
not derived from the pagan mystery religions. His 
use of the title Lord (xvp.os) is most easily and prob- 
ably explained from the use of that title in the Jewish 
synagogue instead of the covenant name Yahveh, 
when the Scriptures were being read. Having 
made this general statement regarding his attitude, 
justified by an adequate study of the relevant litera- 
ture, the writer will not interrupt the exposition of 
Paul’s Christology and soteriology by any discussion 
of the sources from which any idea or term may have 
been derived. 

(3) The starting-point of Paul’s Christology was his 
vision of the Risen Lord in His corporeality (Col. 1. 9, 
cwpatikos), the natural body having been trans- 
formed into the spiritual (cf. 1 Cor. xv. 44), the body 
of His glory (Phil. im. 21). 

(i) The Risen Lord was to him in his inner life, life- 
giving spirit (avedpa Cwomowvy, 1 Cor. xv. 45), a 
cleansing, enlightening, and strengthening power. 
While Paul does distinguish the Lord from the Spirit 
(2 Cor. xii. 14), yet the Lord also does what the Spirit 
effects, and so inseparable is the relation of the Lord 
and the Spirit that in one passage he seems to 
identify the one with the other (2 Cor. ii. 17-18); but 
generally he preserves the distinction.! This glory 
and power became Christ’s at His Resurrection. He 
was then invested as Son of God with power (Rom. 
1. 3-4), and this investiture was the reward of His self- 
humbling or emptying (Phil. 11. 9-11). ‘Then also he 

} This subject will be more fully discussed in the later chapter dealing 
with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 

G 


98 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


received ‘ the name which is above every other name,’ 
the name of Lord (cf. 2 Cor. iv. 5). It is significant 
that Paul, as in contrast with idolatry and polytheism, 
expresses his confession of monotheism in these terms : 
‘To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all 
things, and we unto Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, 
through whom are all things, and we through Him” 
(1 Cor. viii. 6). The Lord Jesus Christ is here sub- 
ordinated as the mediating agency of creation and 
redemption to the Father as the ultimate source and 
the final purpose. (Note the prepositions 6c’ in one 
case, and é€ and eis in the other.) Other passages 
in which this same subordination is taught are Col. 1. 
19, Phil. ii. 9, 1 Cor. vi. 14, iti, 23, xv. 28. An utter- 
ance of passionate emotion such as Romans 1x. 5, 
even if the phrase ‘ who is over all, God blessed for 
ever,’ is to be ascribed to Christ, cannot set aside this 
clearly expressed doctrine. While so distinctly dis- 
tinguishing Christ from the Father, Paul could preserve 
his monotheism only by thus insisting on the sub- 
ordination of Christ to the Father. This subordination 
is entirely in accord with the testimony regarding the 
self-consciousness of Jesus, even as presented to us 
in the Fourth Gospel, as has already been shown. 
It also accords with what we to-day must think ; 
the Incarnate Son, or God as man, God under the 
conditions and limitations of manhood, must be 
subordinate to God as infinite and absolute reality. 
Even if we assume the divine Sonship as real in the 
Godhead antecedent to incarnation, and even creation, 
the term Sonship itself connotes subordination. In 
a later chapter we must return to a full discussion of 
the doctrine of the Godhead, but all that need be 
affirmed here is that the doctrine of subordination, 
which Paul felt to be necessary to his own thought, 
is no less necessary to ours. | 
_-” (ii) Paul, however, is not content with this con- 
fession of the Lordship of Christ in subordination to 
God the Father; drawing inferences from his own 
experience, he seeks to define more closely the relation 
of Christ to God, and also to the world. In Colossians — 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 99 


i. 18-17 he describes Christ as (1) ‘ the Son of His love,’ 
(2) ‘the image of the invisible God,’ and (8) ‘ the 
firstborn of all creation.’ God by His very nature 
is love, and Christ is the object of that love, the 
eternal object, and consequently the appropriate 
historical medium of that same love to man. He is 
the manifestation to men of God Himself, and as such 
manifestation is the final purpose of the universe, 
creation itself being a method of God’s self-revelation, 
He is both prior to, and supreme in the universe, for 
that seems to be the meaning of the phrase ‘ firstborn 
of all creation.’ It corresponds to the phrase in 
Hebrews, ‘ heir of all things,’ as does the phrase ‘ the 
image of the invisible God’ correspond to ‘ the very 
image of His substance,’ * the effulgence of His glory ’ 
(Heb. 1. 2-3). As the manifestation of God, the 
visibility of the invisible, He is the agent of creation 
itself as a revelation of God. Translating this thought 
into terms which may make it more intelligible to us, 
we may say that Paul conceives Christ as Son of God 
as the reality of self-expression and self-communica- 
tion in God, in which lies the possibility and even 
actualisation of the creation as well as redemption 
of man. If man be the summit of the evolution of 
the universe, if he be in his nature akin to, and capable 
of fellowship with God, if the revelation of God to 
man and the redemption of man unto God in Christ 
Jesus be indeed the final purpose of the creation of 
the world and man, then it is credible that He who 
so reveals God and redeems man should have this 
cosmic significance. It is not a merely speculative 
interest that is the motive of this process of thought ; 
it is the practical interest of asserting the absolute 
value of Christ as Saviour and Lord, as Paul had 
proved this in his own experience. 

(in) A still more daring adventure of thought to 
fathom the mystery of the person of Christ is the 
passage in Phil. ii. 6-8. If we do not allow ourselves 
to forget that here also Paul’s aim is practical, to 
commend humility and mutual service by the example 
of Christ, we shall avoid the error of many theologians 


100 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


who seek here authoritative doctrine expressed with 
scholastic minuteness; we shall not attempt to read 
into the words the developed conceptions of a later 
age. Let us rather try to retrace the path of Paul’s 
thought. It was the risen Christ, not the Jesus of 
history, who was the object of his faith, and so 
dominated all his thinking. As divine, he believed 
Christ as necessarily pre-existent, and into this pre- 
existent state he projects his vision of the risen 
Lord, with only this difference, that the name above 
every other name—the Lordship—is not yet His. 
Although He might have claimed it, He chose to win 
it as the reward of His humiliation. The earthly life, 
between that pre-existent state in * the form of God,’ 
and the post-resurrection Lordship, culminating as it 
did in the death on the Cross, is so great a contrast 
to both, that it cannot but be regarded as due to 
a voluntary self-emptying and self-humbling. This 
kenosis (v. 7, €avrov exévwoev) Paul probably did not 
conceive as a surrender of the divine essence, but only 
of such functions and privileges as must be given 
up to make the human humiliation and _ sacrifice 
possible. The metaphysical process which Paul here 
describes presents insuperable difficulties to our 
thought to-day. The historical personality of Christ 
is assigned to the eternal Son of God, and thus the 
unity of the Godhead is imperilled for our thought, 
as we cannot think of Father and Son as separate 
individuals. A temporal act, such as might be 
ascribed to the incarnate Son in time, is ascribed to 
the eternal Son beyond and above time. But it is 
only the form of Paul’s thought that we cannot make 
intelligible to ourselves ; we can preserve its substance 
by the conception of an eternal activity in the Godhead 
of self-limitation for self-communication as Word and 
Son, which is the necessary condition, not only of the 
Incarnation, but of the whole process of creation as 
the manifestation of the Infinite in the finite, the 
Kternal in the temporal. For us the moral glory of 
the Incarnation, culminating in the Cross, as the self- 
sacrifice of God, shines no less brightly than it did 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 101 


for Paul. It is the same thought which is expressed 
in 2 Cor. vii. 9. Ours is a different philosophy, but 
the same faith that Jesus the Christ in His earthly 
life does express the very nature of God as the holy 
love which in His grace stoops to, and shares, the life 
of man to lift man to partnership with God. 

(iv) It has often been affirmed that the earthly life 
of Jesus had no significance for Paul. That he did 
not concern himself with the details in word and deed 
as of primary importance may be conceded ;_ but that 
he was interested in and attached importance to the 
reality of this self-humiliation and self-sacrifice cannot 
be questioned. It is as grace that he regards the 
whole of the earthly life. He mentions the Davidic 
descent (Rom. 1. 8) ‘ according to the flesh’ to dis- 
parage that hope of political Messiahship which the 
Jewish people desired, and Jesus refused. In his 
phrase ‘ born of a woman’ (Gal. iv. 4) Paul may be 
referring to the virgin-birth, as the word yevdpevov 1s 
a neutral word, and does not call for a reference to 
the mother, rather than the father, and this birth 
ex yuvaikos is contrasted with the divine paternity 
(0 eds tov viov avrov). The phrase which follows, 
‘under the law,’ suggests another association of ideas. 
As by a woman sin came into the world (cf. 1 Tim. 
li. 14, 15), so by a woman also came the Saviour from 
sin. As the law ‘ came in beside’ (Rom. v. 20), so 
the Saviour from sin was Himself *‘ under the law’ : 
this was necessary for the completeness of the identi- 
fication of the Saviour with sinners; He must become 
all that man is, that man might become all He 1s; 
this is an instance of His poverty by which alone 
mankind can be made rich. Jesus did submit Him- 
self to the code of laws of His people, and did experi- 
ence this submission as a contradiction of His spirit 
of Sonship (cf. Matt. xvii. 26, 27). That even His 
filial obedience to God involved some strain on His 
will, astrugele and a victory, another statement (Rom. 
vill. 3) implies. ‘ For what the law could not do, in 
that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His 
own Son in the likeness of flesh of sin and for sin (as 


102 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


an offering for sin), condemned sin in the flesh.’ 
Leaving for later consideration the phrase ‘for sin’ as 
referring to the atoning death, we may examine the 
phrase ‘ in the likeness of flesh of sin.’ Paul does not 
deny a similarity of the flesh (the material organism) 
of Christ to that of other men; but he does seem 
to deny that the flesh in Him was the seat. and vehicle 
of sin, as it is in other men, while regarding it as the 
occasion of temptation without sin. He has not the 
interest which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
has in the trials and temptations of Jesus (11. 18, iv. 15); 
but here he must be regarded as dealing with the 
moral experience of Jesus, as a condemnation of man’s 
failure, and yet a promise of his victory. The sin- 
lessness achieved ‘ in the likeness of the flesh of sin ’ 
is referred to again in the phrase (2 Cor. v. 21) ‘ Him 
who knew no sin.’ Nevertheless Him, though sinless, 
he goes on to affirm, ‘ He (God) made to be sin on our 
behalf, that we might become the righteousness of 
God in Him.’ What does the phrase ‘ made to be 
sin’ mean? What the context seems to demand is 
a paraphrase such as this: ‘ He was treated as a 
sinner,’ or ‘the consequences of sin fell on Him.’ 
The abstract phrase was surely chosen by Paul because 
of the difficulty he felt in stating the truth without 
falling into error. We must carefully avoid saying 
that ‘ He was held guilty,’ or ‘ He was punished’ by 
God, for these terms are applicable to sinners only. 
God did not regard Jesus, nor did Jesus regard Himself, 
as a sinner ; such moral confusion would be impossible 
to the Father knowing the Son, and the Son knowing 
the Father. It was the Father’s will, accepted by 
the Son, that He, the sinless, should experience the 
consequences of sin. How was this possible? and 
why was this necessary ?—these are questions which 
must meanwhile be held over. That this experience 
of the consequences of sin was complete, going as far 
as 1s conceivable, Paul affirms in the startling saying 
(Gal. i. 13), ‘ Christ redeemed us from the curse of 
the law, having become a curse for us : for it is written, 
Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.’ Jesus 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 103 


not only died, so sharing the human lot, but He 
endured a death which was regarded among the Jews 
as accursed (see Deut. xxi. 23 and xxvii. 26). As in 
the previous passage Paul does not say ‘ was made a 
sinner,’ but * was made sin,’ so here he does not say 
‘became accursed,’ but ‘ became a curse,’ seeking 
evidently to maintain the distinction between personal 
guilt and punishment and vicarious endurance of the 
consequences of the sin of mankind. Doubtless Paul 
was acquainted with the record of Gethsemane and 
Calvary, and on the ground of the facts there given, 
and not only as an inference from the texts quoted 
by him, he regarded the death of Christ as invested 
with unique horror and distress. Through all these 
passages there runs the dominating thought of the 
kenosis, the self-emptying and the self-humbling of 
the Son of God in His identification of Himself with 
all that constitutes the struggle, the sorrow, the 
burden, and the desolation of the lot of ‘mankind 
sinners.’ While this full sharing of the life of man 
culminated in the Cross, the risen Christ was for Paul 
still a partner with man. As faith for him was so 
close a union that he had been crucified and had 
risen, nay, rather, was being crucified and raised with 
Christ, so Christ’s grace did mean such a union with 
himself that his sorrows were the sufferings of Christ, 
and thus were not uncomforted (2 Cor. 1.5). ‘ As the 
sufferings of Christ abound unto us, even so also our 
comfort aboundeth through Christ.’ The scars upon 
his body left by stonings and scourgings were * the 
marks of Jesus’ (Gal. vi. 17). He rejoiced in filling 
up the measure of his sufferings for the sake of Christ’s 
body, because Christ so shared them that he could 
speak of them as ‘ the afflictions of Christ ’ (Col. 1. 24). 
For Paul there is thus a continuity in disposition, pur- 
pose, activity between the Son of God and the humilia- 
tion in time, and again between that humiliation and 
the exaltation of the risen Lord: and because of that 
humiliation voluntarily endured, that exaltation is 
something more than was the glory of the pre-existent 
state of the Son of God, and not merely a return to 


104 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


it unchanged. The kenosis resulted in a plerosis, the 
self-emptying in a self-fulfilment. Paul’s Christology 
is, the writer is convinced, one that Christian thought 
to-day cannot afford to ignore or neglect. Even 
should we need to use other terms, yet the substance 
of his thought has a permanent and universal value, 
for it is the interpretation, necessary and appropriate, 
of an inspired experience. 

(4) It has been an incalculable loss to Christian 
theology that Paul’s soteriology, or doctrine of the 
work of Christ, has been separated from his Christ- 
ology, or doctrine of the person of Christ ; for in 
such separation it can very easily be subjected to a 
legalistic explanation which does it grave injury. If 
for him the love of God as shown and imparted in 
the grace of Christ was real, no less real was the 
righteousness of God ; and his doctrine of atonement 
is his endeavour to show how the love of God through 
the grace of Christ does not annul, but sustains the 
righteousness of God. 

(i) God’s righteousness is the reaction, and necessary 
reaction, of God’s moral perfection—His holy love— 
against sin, not exclusively in condemning and punish- 
ing sin (that Paul describes as the wrath of God, Rom. 
i. 18), but rather predominantly in securing for man 
deliverance from that judgment on sin, for God 1s 
righteous, not in spite of His reckoning righteous those 
who have faith in Christ, but because He so reckons 
them (iii. 26). It shows a lack of moral insight to 
assume that righteousness must be punitive and 
repressive, and cannot be also reformatory and re- 
demptive. Righteousness must be expansive and 
reproductive; and its fullest vindication is not in 
making the bad suffer, but in making the bad good. 
This, there can be no doubt, was how Paul thought. 
It is this conception—the righteousness of God as 
both a quality of God and a gift to man—which is his 
guiding principle in dealing with the work of Christ. 
It is not necessary for the present purpose to offer an 
exegetical study of Paul’s use of this term, for enough 
has been said above to indicate how we are to under- 





APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 105 


stand its meaning. In the righteousness of God there 
meet God’s judgment on sin and His forgiveness of 
sinners, for God’s forgiveness comes in such a way 
and by such means as show His judgment; and the 
judgment on sin comes in such a way and by such 
means as will ensure that forgiveness—the recovery 
of the filial relation to God interrupted by sin—will 
issue in holiness. God so reckons sinners righteous 
in Christ as to make them righteous, for grace is such 
a divine activity in man, and faith is such a human 
receptivity towards God, that this recovered fellowship 
of God and man in Christ becomes creative of, not 
only a new relation to God, but a new character in man. 

(11) The antecedent of this righteousness of God is for 
Paul the propitiation of Christ's blood, and its con- 
sequent reconciliation with God and redemption from 
sin, law, death, and doom. For him the revelation of 
the righteousness of God is in the Cross of Christ. 
What is the necessity of this connection? In the 
past God’s judgment on sin had been tempered with 
mercy, there had been a ‘ passing over of the sins 
done aforetime, in the forbearance of God’ (Rom. 11. 
25). God’s righteousness as judging sin had thus 
been obscured. Now that God offered forgiveness 
of sins, which is more than showing mercy even, 
without any judgment on sinners, it was the more 
necessary that that judgment should be displayed in 
some other way, even a more unmistakable way. On 
the Cross the judgment was borne by Christ and did 
not fall on men. Paul does not say that the sacrifice 
of Christ propitiated God in changing God’s disposition 
towards men, His displeasure into favour, His wrath 
into grace. With the same care as in the passages 
‘already noted (that Christ was made sin, and became 
a curse) he states that Christ was set forth propitiatory 
(ttaorHpiov) ‘through faith, by His blood’ (Rom. i. 
25). It is best to take the word thacrypioyv as a 
neuter adjective, conveying the idea in the most 
general way. Although God is eternally holy love, 
and need not be changed in disposition towards man, 
yet we do not do full justice to Paul’s thought, whether 


106 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


we can share it or not, unless we admit that for him, 
at least, Christ’s death not only revealed God as 
propitious towards men, but even rendered God pro- 
pitious, as showing both God’s wrath against sin, and 
the appeasement of that wrath—wrath not as a 
passion inconsistent with His holy love, but as a 
necessary reaction of His heart against the sin which 
thwarts and hinders the purpose of that holy love. 

(iii) This line of thought may be described as legal ; 
but the use of the phrase ‘ by His blood,’ suggesting 
sacrifice, introduces another circle of ideas which we 
may describe as ritual. Many modern scholars deny 
that the sacrifices of the Old Testament involved the 
idea of penal substitution or satisfaction ; while we 
may concede this as regards sacrifice generally, yet 
the trespass offering had a reference to breaches of 
God’s law, and was regarded as appointed by God as a 
means of recovering His favour. In Isaiah li. 10 the 
Servant of Yahveh is made ‘a guilt-offering,’ and, as 
the rest of the chapter shows, that is understood to 
mean. vicarious suffering, even penal substitution and 
satisfaction. But that picture itself forbids our re- 
garding that substitution from the standpoint of law, 
and not of love. Love is by its very nature vicarious, 
and takes the place of the loved. Christ in His grace 
completely identified Himself with the lot of man, 
sharing with man the consequences of his sin. How 
far Paul consciously distinguished the legal and the 
ritual associations, and combined them, we cannot 
conjecture; what is certain is that, as his language 
shows, he did think of Christ’s death both as a sacri- 
ues and as a vicarious endurance of the consequences 
of sin. 

(iv) We must not attempt to weaken his thought 
by introducing an idea which the Epistle to the 
Hebrews makes prominent. It is urged by some 
who cannot find themselves at home in this circle 
of ideas, that what was important was not the blood- 
shedding or death of the victim, but the blood-sprink- 
ling, or the presentation of the life to God; but we 
cannot separate the two ideas, for it was the blood- 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 107 


shedding that made the blood-sprinkling possible.! 
Christ did offer His life unto God in holy obedience, 
but He learned obedience, proved what obedience 
may require to the uttermost, in enduring death. 
There is in Christ’s death a representative submission, 
but there is also a vicarious suffering. A misunder- 
standing that the clause ‘ through faith’ (Rom. 11. 
25) might suggest must also be removed. Paul does 
not mean that the death of Christ is by faith invested 
with a meaning as propitiatory, which it does not in 
fact possess ; but what he does mean is that the fact 
is not disclosed to unbelief, but only to faith, and 
only faith can claim God as in Christ propitiatory. 
(v) The consequent of the righteousness of God 
which judges in forgiving sin is reconciliation with God. 
Doubt, distrust, disobedience are banished from the 
heart of the sinner who becomes a child of God. 
This is a consequent, however, which man must 
realise by his own response of gratitude, confidence, 
submission to God; hence Paul exhorts believers to 
have peace with God (Rom.v.1). This reconciliation 
involves the appropriation of all the blessings which 
belong to the children of God. But a serious question 
must be faced: is this reconciliation mutual? It is 
true that the exhortation to be reconciled to God is 
addressed to men; but the basis of the appeal is 
‘the word of reconciliation,’ namely, that God is 
‘not reckoning to men their trespasses ’ (2 Cor. v. 19), 
and that surely means that God in Christ is reconciled. 
God’s disposition and purpose towards men are not 
changed, but His attitude to them is: the pain of 
His judgment is changed to the joy of His favour. 
Four reasons for this conclusion can be suggested :— 
(1) In Romans xi. 28 ‘ enemies’ are so contrasted with 
‘ beloved’ that we must regard them as exposed to 
God’s antagonism. (2) If ‘ while we were enemies, 
we were reconciled to God through the death of His 
Son’ (Rom. v. 10), the process of reconciliation must 
have begun on God’s side before it began on man’s. 
(3) If we may speak of God’s wrath, we may surely 


1 See Westcott’s The Epistle to the Hebrews, Additional Note on ix. 12. 


108 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


speak of His reconciliation. (4) If God may be 
spoken of as in Christ propitiatory, why may we not 
speak of Him as reconciled? The two words, pro- 
pitiatory and reconciled, must both be used with 
caution; it must never be suggested that the death 
of Christ wrought a change in God’s character, that 
from being wrathful He was made merciful; 1t must 
always be made plain that God’s holy love is the 
motive of His reconciliation with man. 

(vi) Redemption is the most comprehensive term to 
express the consequences of Christ’s work for man in 
revealing God as propitiatory, and in reconciling God 
and man. In one of the few sayings of Jesus about 
His death, He speaks of it as a ransom for many 
(Matt. xx. 28); but the word redemption may mean 
simply deliverance without any reference to a ransom 
by which it is effected. It is not at all necessary for 
us to ask the question, to whom was the ransom paid ; 
still less should we answer it, as one of the earliest 
theories of the Atonement did, that 1t was paid to the 
devil, under whose dominion man had voluntarily 
placed himself by sin.!_ Passing with a bare mention 
one aspect of redemption, very important for Paul, 
but without significance for us—the victory of Christ 
on His Cross over ‘the principalities and powers,’ 
angels or demons (Col. ii. 15)—the redemption as 
Paul conceives it is fourfold. (a) Man is redeemed 
from the wrath of God, God’s doom on sin, because 
it has been taken up into the righteousness of God; 
its necessity has been removed, because such pur- 
pose as it sought in the moral order has been 
fulfilled in a more excellent way by the manifesta- 
tion of God’s judgment in the Cross of Christ. 
(b) Man is redeemed from death as the penalty of sin 
by the hope of resurrection rooted in the believer’s 
relation to Christ as the living Lord, or the belief 
that absent from the body he is at home with the 
Lord (2 Cor. v. 8). This belief replaced the hope of 
the resurrection, when Paul became less confident of 


1 See A History of the Doctrine of the Work of Christ, Franks, vol. 1. 
References in Index under ‘ Redemption from the devil.’ 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 109 


his survival to the Second Coming of the Lord. 
(c) Man is redeemed from the bondage to the flesh, 
so vividly described by Paul in the autobiographical 
passage (Rom. vil. 7-25), by his personal union in 
faith to Christ, in whom he died unto sin, and lived 
unto God. ‘The expulsive power of the new affection ’ 
frees him from the appetites and passions which 
hitherto had held him in thrall. (d) Man is redeemed 
from the law—a matter of great importance to Paul 
as a Jew and a Pharisee, because his life is brought 
under grace and not law; the new commandment 
of love to God and man is the fulfilling of the whole 
law; and this commandment the saved man finds his 
freedom and joy in keeping because of his new motive, 
the constraining love of Christ (2 Cor. v. 14). Thus 
reconciled to God, redeemed from the flesh and the 
law, death and doom, the believer enjoys God’s favour, 
has freedom of access to Him in prayer, rejoices in 
hope, not only endures trials cheerfully, but finds in 
that endurance a discipline of character (Rom. v. 1-4). 
He possesses the Spirit of God not only. as the source 
of manifold gifts, but as the power within that 
sanctifies him, and so prepares him for the inheritance 
of the saints in light. Amid all the sorrows, tempta- 
tions, and trials of this earthly life he knows that all 
things are working together for his good (Rom. vii. 
28), and that there is nothing real or conceivable that 
can separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus 
our Lord (vv. 38-39). 

(vii) The reconciliation and redemption thus de- 
scribed Paul himself ewpertenced through his faith in 
Christ as Saviour and Lord; and his experience 
belongs to the fact of Christ, the historical reality of 
the grace of Christ, which is the basis of the con- 
structive theology being offered in these pages. When 
he is expounding the righteousness of God as revealed 
and realised in Christ propitiatory on His Cross, he is 
going beyond religious and moral experience to theo- 
logical explanation ; and we must ask ourselves how 
far we can take up what he here offers into the con- 
structive theology which we can to-day defend and 


110 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


commend: to the thought of our own time. The full 
discussion of the doctrine of the atonement for our 
own age must be reserved for a later chapter; but 
here the writer may very briefly indicate how far he 
is able to take up into his own convictions regarding 
the work of Christ what Paul held. He believes that 
there is a wrath of God, a displeasure of God against 
sin, a necessary reaction of His perfection against 
the contradiction and challenge thereof; that the 
divine order of the world in the consequences— 
physical, moral, social—of sin now inadequately mani- 
fests that reaction, but anticipates a more adequate 
manifestation either in the future life of the individual 
or a future age of the race; that death in its totality, 
not as a physical event merely, but as a personal 
experience, may be regarded as the penalty of sin; 
that to awaken man’s penitence as well as faith it 
was necessary for God to show convincingly His 
judgment on as well as forgiveness of sin, as He has 
indeed done in the sacrifice of the Cross; that it was 
necessary for God as eternally perfect in consistency 
with His character, and in order to carry out His 
purpose to make men sharers of His perfection, to 
assert His own righteousness, His reaction against 
sin, in a judgment on sin more authoritative for the 
human conscience than could be the punishment of 
‘mankind sinners’; that for the moral community of 
God with man, man’s penitence must respond to, 
correspond with God’s condemnation of sin; that 
the death of Christ does somehow express God’s con- 
demnation, and evoke man’s penitence. Just how 
Christ’s Cross does this Paul does not make altogether 
clear; what is certain is that Christ did endure the 
consequences of sin on our behalf, and, as He thus 
delivers us from them, it may be added, instead of us. 
What Christ did endure, how He could so endure, 
why He must so endure, Paul does not fully disclose, 
and these questions we must try to answer when 
offering the constructive doctrine. Of one thing the 
writer is quite certain, and has become more certain 
with years of experience, study, and meditation, and, 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 111 


he may even dare to add, of some illumination by the 
Spirit: that to omit what Paul teaches regarding the 
work of Christ from Christian doctrine, whatever 
intellectual difficulties 1t may present, would be to 
impoverish the religious experience and to enfeeble 
the moral character of Christian believers. 


II 


It is generally recognised that there is a marked 
difference between the Fourth and the other Gospels, 
Into critical theories it is not necessary here to enter. 
Sufficient for the present purpose is the statement 
that in the Fourth Gospel there is not only evangelical 
testimony, but also apostolic experience and interpre- 
tation. There are the recollections of an eye-witness, 
which supplement the testimony of the other Gospels 
in respect to the number of visits paid to Jerusalem at 
the great feasts, and the character of the teaching 
there given—controversy with the teachers and rulers 
of the nation in regard to the claims of the Son. 
What is but mentioned in the other Gospels—the 
consciousness of Sonship towards God—is often and 
clearly asserted. Meditation on what was remem- 
bered was added to these recollections, either by this 
eye-witness or a disciple of his, and these meditations 
were affected by a personal experience of the presence 
of Christ and communion with Him, and also of the 
guiding and the enlightening of the Spirit, giving a 
fuller meaning to words which had been recalled. 
Further, there are passages which are combined with, 
and yet can be distinguished from, these recollections 
and meditations, in which a more developed meta- 
physics of the person of Christ is expounded than 
would be appropriate in the historical situation on 
the lips of Christ Himself. In the interpretation of 
these passages throughout the Gospel care must be 
taken not to read into them the philosophy of the 
Prologue—the doctrine of the Logos or the Word of 
God; as they are an expansion of the conception of 
the Sonship, which is the dominant influence in the 


112 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Gospel. In dealing with the representation in this 
Gospel of the person and work of Christ we cannot 
with any certainty separate recollections and medita- 
tions; in the mind of the disciple sayings of Jesus 
expanded into statements of his own faith which he 
could not himself distinguish from the facts which he 
recalled. These metaphysical explanations and the 
doctrine of the Logos we can, however, deal with 
separately. 

~(1) Only the leading characteristics of Jesus as 
presented in the Fourth Gospel need be indicated. 

(i) First of all to be noted is His certainty of His 
relation as Son to God as Father—His communion 
with, dependence on, and submission to God, and 
His consequent confidence in the sufficiency of His 
resources from God for the fulfilment of His vocation. 
This is a development of, but not in contradiction with, 
the self-testimony of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. 

(ii) Next must be mentioned His assurance that as 
He can satisfy all the needs of men as the Bread from 
Heaven (John vi. 82-58), the Living Water (iv. 13, 14, 
vii. 37-38), the Light of the World (vill. 12, 1x. 5), 
so in Him men by acceptance of what He offers gain 
full salvation, the possession of the eternal life, but 
by rejection in sin and unbelief bring on themselves 
condemnation. He is thus the Judge of mankind 
(v. 22). 

(iii) In this Gospel there is exhibited as in no other 
the intimacy of the personal relation between the 
disciples and the Master as the Door (x. 7), the Good 
Shepherd (v. 11), and the Vine (xv. 1-6). As He as 
Son is related to the Father, so are they to be to Him, 
trusting, loving, obeying, holding fellowship. Death 
will not destroy this relationship, as He will still be 
present to them, and they will be able to hold com- 
munion with Him. That presence and communion 
will be mediated by the other Paraclete, the Holy 
Spirit, who will not supersede Him, but complete His 
revelation in unfolding its meaning. This teaching 
in the last discourse (xiv.-xvii.) is distinctive of this 
Gospel; but it so closely corresponds with what 1s 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 1138 


most typical of the deepest Christian experience that, 
even if we have not before us a verbatim report, the 
conviction is irresistible that this is the record of an 
experience, in which the promises of the Master Him- 
self were fulfilled, that the Jesus of history intended 
to be to His disciples what the Christ of his faith 
proved Himself to be to this disciple. Without 
attempting to distinguish recollections and medita- 
tions, we can accept this contribution to our Christian 
thought, not as theological speculation, but as personal 
experience, which may be added, even as Paul’s, to the 
historical reality of Jesus as the Christ and the Lord. 

(iv) While there is not a developed doctrine of the 
Atonement, this Gospel no less definitely asserts the 
necessity of the death of Christ not only as voluntarily 
endured as a sign of the Shepherd’s devotion to His 
sheep, and as a proof of the Son’s obedience to the 
Father, but as the necessary condition of His universal 
saving efficacy for man (ii. 14-15, xii. 24, 32). In the 
First Epistle more prominence is given to the atoning 
death, and the forgiving and cleansing grace of Christ. 
* The blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin’ 
(i. 7). ‘* We have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus 
Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for 
our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole 
world’ (i. 1-2). ‘If we confess our sins, God 1s 
faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to 
cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1. 9). It may 
be said confidently that there is substantial agreement 
with the Pauline doctrine. 

(v) This Gospel is very much more explicit than 
are the Synoptics regarding the Resurrection (xiv.- 
xvu.). It is a return to the Father, a recovery of the 
glory which the Son had with the Father before the 
world was; and yet after a temporary separation 
there will be reunion with His disciples, and His 
presence and power will again be experienced in the 
inward working of the other Paraclete, the Holy 
‘Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. Here we have the be- 
ginnings of the doctrine of the Trinity ; the Father 
immanent in the Son, and the Son in the Holy Spirit. 

H 


114 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(vi) What has been implicit hitherto must be now 
made explicit. There is an advance of thought in 
this Gospel beyond the common Christian tradition. 
While the older eschatology, inherited by the Christian 
Church from Judaism, is not absent, yet it is being 
superseded. Even in His earthly life Jesus is Judge 
(ix. 39), for by their attitude of faith or unbelief men 
secure salvation or incur condemnation (ili, 18-21). 
Apart from Him, men are already perishing under 
death (v. 16, cf. 1 John iii. 14); in Him they now 
possess eternal life, and cannot die; there has been a 
spiritual resurrection. His is a universal and per- 
manent presence with His Church, in His Spirit, and 
thus He is ever coming into the world. If we trust the 
record of the teaching of Jesus this development had 
the authority of words of His, remembered but only 
afterwards understood. As we have observed the 
same tendency in Paul, we may for our constructive 
theology now discard the older eschatology, and be 
guided by this teaching instead. 

(vii) We come to teaching which is altogether 
peculiar to the Fourth Gospel, the utterances about 
pre-existence. We can deal with these apart from 
the metaphysical explanations and the doctrine of 
the Logos. Some of them we must regard as com- 
ments of the evangelist (i. 80, i. 13, vi. 38, 38, 50, 
58-62). What remains is the response to the challenge 
of His enemies in vili. 58: ‘ Before Abraham was, I 
am.’ The contrast here between yevéofar and eipi 
indicates a timeless existence. The term pre-existence 
is contradictory, as expressing such timeless existence, 
since it suggests priority in time, and to speak of a 
continuity of consciousness between that timeless 
existence and the whole of the life in time is to make 
a development under human conditions and limita- 
tions altogether inconceivable. The only intelligible 
explanation of such a saying, accepting its authen- 
ticity, is this, that the more Jesus’ claim was chal- 
lenged the more certain He became of His relation 
to God as Son to Father, and that this certainty 
included a distinct intuition that this relation had not 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 115 


and could not have begun in time, but was eternal as 
God Himself. In the seventeenth chapter Jesus is 
represented as regarding His Resurrection as a return 
to the Father, and a recovery of the glory He had 
with the Father before the world was (v. 5), and of 
His Father’s love as ‘ before the foundation of the 
world’ (v. 24). Such meditation on His relation to 
God seems altogether appropriate to the occasion, 
and the mood of Jesus in the Upper Room, and we 
may accept this testimony that the consciousness of 
Sonship did include the intuition of timeless relation 
to God. 

(2) ‘The representation of the person and work thus 
sketched we may regard as historical testimony (in- 
cluding therein that of Christian experience). There 
are, however, in the Fourth Gospel, theological ex- 
planations which can easily be distinguished from 
what we can reckon as testimony; and the value of 
these as a contribution to a constructive theology 
must be tested with care, as even an apostle’s in- 
ferences cannot be as authoritative for us as his witness 

to history or experience. 
(i) The disclosures of the Messiahship by Jesus 
Himself and the confession of it by others are ante- 
dated (i. 41, etc.). There is a tendency to exaggerate 
the supernaturalness of the knowledge of Jesus (1. 48, 
li. 24-25, iv. 17, 18, vi. 6). The apologetic interest of 
the evangelist ascribes to Jesus what cannot be 
described otherwise than-as an artificial pose (vi. 5-6, 
x1. 42, xii. 30, xiv. 29), and results in a disproportion 
in the presentation of the teaching as more polemical 
than it really was. Hither the witness or his disciple 
in several passages develops his own doctrine. The 
first passage (v. 19-29, except v. 24), on the relation of 
Father and Son, emphasises the absolute dependence, 
complete knowledge, and entire resemblance of the 
Son, and insists on equal honour. The functions of 
quickening the dead and judgment—to be understood 
either spiritually or eschatologically—are entrusted 
by, and exercised in dependence on the Father. In 
the second passage (vi. 51, 52-57) there seems to be 


116 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


an expansion of the words used at the Supper to affirm 
the believer’s absolute dependence by faith on Jesus, 
and most of all on His sacrifice, for the maintenance 
of his life and its satisfaction. In the third passage 
a still more experimental note is struck (John i. 
16-21). Eternal life depends on faith in the Son as 
the gift of the Father’s love; while the divine in- 
tention in that gift is salvation, man’s unbelief can 
turn it into condemnation. While we thus distinguish 
the reminiscences and the reflections, the sayings in 
the Gospel about the Holy Spirit (xiv. 16-20, 26, xv. 
26-27, xvi. 7-15) show that for the author that dis- 
tinction would have been meaningless. It was the 
Spirit in whom Christ continued His presence who 
unfolded the meaning of His works and words. The 
Johannine and the Pauline theology are thus in sub- 
stantial agreement as regards both the relation of 
Christ as Son to God as Father, and the relation 
of the believer to Christ as Saviour and Lord, some- 
times represented as immediate, at others as mediated 
by the Holy Spirit. If we follow the rendering of the 
R.V. in John iil. 34, then it is Christ who is repre- 
sented as giving to believers the Spirit, not by 
measure; but elsewhere (xiv. 16) the Spirit is repre- 
sented as the Father’s gift in response to the prayer 
of the Son: and this seems to accord more closely 
with the Johannine doctrine on the relation of the 
Father and the Son. If we follow the A.V. rendering, 
however, which represents Christ Himself as the 
recipient of the Spirit without measure from God, 
then the Spirit would be conceived as mediating not 
only the relation of the believer to Christ, but even that 
of the Son to the Father. There would be here the 
germ of a doctrine of the Trinity. But His bestowal 
of the Spirit might refer only to the Son incarnate as 
a condition of the Incarnation, but not the ‘inner life’ 
of the Godhead. 

(ii) The most distinctive contribution of the Fourth 
Gospel to Christology is the Logos doctrine of the 
Prologue. The writer does not believe that the 
Prologue was written by the disciple who was the 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 117 


witness of the works and words of Jesus in the flesh, 
but by a disciple of his who reported his teaching. 
He holds with Harnack! as against Scott 2 that the 
doctrine of the Logos does not dominate the whole 
representation of Jesus in the Gospel. It is the truth 
of the divine Sonship which runs through the rest of 
the Gospel, and affects, so far as it does affect, the 
record of the facts. Whether the doctrine of the 
Prologue be derived from the system of Philo, or has 
a Palestinian origin, or can be directly traced to the 
‘Wisdom’ literature, is a question which for the 
present purpose it is not necessary to decide, although 
the writer, after weighing the arguments pro and 
con each view, inclines to believe that the Philonic 
influence cannot be excluded, whether it was direct 
or not. A brief comparison between the Philonic and 
the Johannine doctrine will serve the end in view, 
the estimate of the value of the Logos conception for 
Christian constructive theology. 

(a) While for Philo the Logos is not a person dis- 
tinct from God, the Fourth Gospel identifies the Logos 
with the historical personality of Jesus; and thus, 
as also does Paul in Phil. ii. 1-11, mentally projects 
the historical personality into the eternal reality of 
the Godhead. To identify the concrete individuality 
of Jesus with the Logos within the Godhead is to 
be involved in metaphysical difficulties from which 
Christology in later developments has been making 
vain attempts to escape. 

(b) This identification, instead of being a solution, 
was rather a problem for speculative thought in the 
Church. If the Logos be regarded as not only 
personal, but a person, as was the historical Jesus, 
the divine unity is sacrificed to tritheism. Only if 
we so far modify the identification as to conceive the 
Logos as by Incarnation acquiring the concrete in- 
dividuality of the historical Jesus, and not as eternally 
a person distinct from God the Father, can we preserve 
the divine unity. Where the unity of the Godhead 


1 The History of Dogma, vol. i. p. 329. 
2 The Fourth Gospel, pp. 163-75. 


118 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


and the equality of Father and Son were emphasised 
in subsequent theological thought, the doctrine of a 
distinct personal Logos fell into the background. 
Where that doctrine was emphasised, the subordina- 
tion of the Logos to God was insisted on. In the 
Athanasian teaching the Logos doctrine is modified 
in the interests of the divine unity; the logical 
development of that doctrine results in the Arian 
heresy. 

(c) The Logos doctrine in Philo was the solution of 
a cosmic problem, not a moral or a religious—the 
relation of the infinite, eternal, perfect God to an 
imperfect world in space and time. While the Pro- 
logue passes quickly from a reference to the making 
of the world by the Word (v. 3) to the moral and 
religious interest of the Gospel, yet the tendency in 
later developments of the doctrine was to emphasise 
the metaphysical instead of the ethical and theological. 
The taking over of this philosophical idea has not been 
by any means an unmixed blessing to the Christian 
Church. 

(d) A difference between the Philonic and the 
Johannine conception must, however, be noted. It 
was because Philo conceived God as so transcendent of 
the world as to be unrelated to and unrevealed in the 
world, that he had to conceive the Logos as mediating 
the relation of God to, and the revelation of God in, 
the world. It is because for him God and the world 
are so apart that he needs to think of the Logos to 
come between them, and bring them together. In 
the Fourth Gospel it is immanence which is the ruling 
idea. The Father so dwells in the Son and the Son 
in believers as the children of God, that in and by the 
Logos God Himself is brought to men, and men to 
God. It is only when so modified by Christian ex- 
perience that the doctrine of the Logos can have any 
value for Christian theology. What use can be made 
of it will afterwards be shown. This may now be— 
said, however, that it is in the representation of the 
immediate and intimate relation of Father and Son, 
and then of the Son with believers, that the distinctive 


APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE & INTERPRETATION 119 


value of the Fourth Gospel lies, not as a contribution 
to speculative thought, but as a stimulus to spiritual 
experience. 

(ii) While the Fourth Gospel does not deny the 
manhood, and does give indications that the Word 
did become /lesh, yet the Epistle to the Hebrews may 
be regarded as complementary to it in the way in 
which it brings out the significance of the human 
experience, and not merely the human nature, as the 
creeds assert. In discussing the evangelical testimony 
reference has been frequently made to that Epistle 
as affording what can truly be regarded as an inspired 
commentary on such facts as the Temptation in the 
Wilderness, the Agony in Gethsemane, and the 
Desolation of Calvary. It is, therefore, not necessary 
to deal with that Epistle as part of the Apostolic 
testimony in a separate discussion. [If the Apostolic 
interpretation in some of its more speculative aspects 
exposes our thought to the peril of losing our firm 
hold of the historical reality, this Epistle always 
brings us back to it; and this is an invaluable service, 
for Christian faith must always strike deep its roots 
into, and draw freely its nourishment from, the soil 
of fact both in the history of the earthly life and the 
experience by believers of the heavenly power of 
Jesus the Christ our Lord. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE DOGMATIC FORMULATION REGARDING 
THE PERSON OF CHRIST 


Tuis chapter and the-next will not attempt to give 
the history of the doctrines of the Person and the 
Work of Christ, for these have unfortunately been 
separated in Christian theology, and in the Christian 
Church. That is not necessary to, and would not 
serve the purpose of, this volume. Only those sub- 
jects will be discussed that can further the object of a 
constructive theology. 

(i) A remarkable difference in the lot of the two 
doctrines must first of all be noted. The doctrine 
of the person of Christ has found a dogmatic formula- 
tion in a series of cecumenical creeds ; and the Chris- 
tian Church may be said to have expressed its mind 
authoritatively upon it. The doctrine of the work 
of Christ, on the other hand, has not had that good or 
ill fortune. There have been various theories of the 
Atonement expounded, and generally accepted at 
different times; but it cannot be said that the Church 
has come to any accord on this subject as it has on 
the other. Accordingly, it will be necessary to deal 
with the two doctrines differently : it will suffice in 
this chapter to consider how far the dogmatic formula- 
tion of the doctrine of the person of Christ in the 
cecumenical creeds can be regarded as adequate to 
meet the demands of modern thinking; it will be 
necessary to discuss a number of theories of the 
Atonement in the next chapter to discover what 
truth they may contain for our thought to-day. It 
is true that the separation of the two doctrines cannot 
be absolute, as it was a definite conception of the work 


of Christ which affected the conception which was 
120 ) 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 121 


formed of the person of Christ; and a definite theory 
of the Atonement must assume some view of. the 
nature of Him who effects that Atonement. Never- 
theless, a relative separation there has been, greatly 
to the injury of both the doctrines. 

(11) While there is danger in historical generalisa- 
tions, there are some which are not only justified, but 
even necessary. The course of Christian theology 
has been affected in a very remarkable manner by 
the difference of the Greek and the Latin mind. The 
first was speculative and consequently metaphysical ; 
the second was practical and as a result ethical or 
legal. The doctrine of the person of Christ as dog- 
matically formulated is the product of the Greek 
genius. The Roman ethos restored to prominence 
in the thought of the Church, and gave its character 
to what was thought about the work of Christ. 
There is a Greek and a Latin type of theology clearly 
distinguishable, since these differences between the 
Greek and the Latin mind do correspond to diverging 
tendencies of human interest and activity. There 
will always be those to whom the Incarnation makes 
more of an appeal than does the Atonement, and 
vice versa. But Christian constructive theology must 
aim at wholeness, and shun one-sidedness. To lay 
emphasis, as did the Greek theology, on Christ’s human 
nature is to move from the region of practice to that 
of theory; to lay stress on His human ewperience as 
giving the meaning of the Incarnation, is to pass from 
the realm of speculation into that of morality and 
religion, is to find the point of contact between the 
doctrines of the Incarnation and the Atonement. 
Accordingly, the writer entirely disagrees with those 
who advocate a return from the Latin to the Greek 
type of theology. We must advance beyond both 
to such a conception of the Incarnation as will make 
Atonement its characteristic activity, and such a 
conception of the Atonement as will make the Incar- 
nation the necessary source of it. In dealing with 
the two doctrines separately, as their history compels 
us to do, we must never allow ourselves to forget that 


122 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


while they are distinguishable, yet they are not 
separable, for the content of the work depends on the 
character of the person of Christ, and the meaning of 
the work shows the worth of the person. 

(iii) To these two theological types correspond the 
two dominant tendencies in the Christian Church 
to-day, the Catholic and the Protestant, or the sacra- 
mental and the evangelical. The close connection 
between the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation 
and the sacramental tendency is not always adequately 
emphasised. Where stress is laid on a union of 
natures rather than on a personal activity, and 
especially where great importance is attached to the 
assumption of a body as part of human nature, the 
belief in material channels of spiritual gifts follows 
with logical consistency. To anticipate the subse- 
quent discussion by way of illustrating this we may 
note that monophysitism and_ transubstantiation 
theories have a close mental kinship. Protestantism 
has always concerned itself more with theories of the 
Atonement than has Catholicism; for while at the 
Reformation the orthodox Christology was taken over, 
although developed in different directions in the 
Lutheran and the Reformed Churches, yet apart from 
the kenotic theories Protestantism has not concerned 
itself greatly with the doctrine of the Incarnation. 
And the kenctic theories, inasmuch as they aimed 
at so conceiving the Incarnation as to allow for a 
human ewperience, are true to the Protestant tendency 
with its stress not so much on what Christ was as on 
what Christ did. If there is to be a reunion of the 
Christian Churches—even of the Catholic and the 
Protestant—it will be necessary to harmonise these 
two theological tendencies, for unity in thought re- 
garding the person and work of Christ is a necessary 
condition of union of spirit in Him. 


I 


We are not at all concerned here with the ancient 
creeds as standards of orthodoxy, or as weapons 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 123 


against heresy, nor with the question whether the 
truth of the Gospel needs to be so defended, or ought 
to be so commended. As the keynote of this volume 
is ‘ through fact to faith,’ our primary questions are : 

‘Does the dogmatic formulation express personal faith 
in Jesus Christ the Lord as we to-day conceive it ? 
Does it correspond with historical fact as modern 
scholarship establishes it? A subordinate question, 
important for constructive theology, which must use 
the philosophy of the age in interpreting the history 
and giving intellectual form to the faith, is this: 
Can the metaphysical formulae employed meet the 
demands of the philosophical thought of our own 
time? Before these questions can be answered, a 
summary of the history must be given. 

(1) The Apostles’ Creed does not come from the 
Apostolic Age; but its beginnings can be traced back 
to Irenaeus, a.pD. 185, as an expansion of the Roman 
Baptismal Creed, and in its present form it is first 
found in 750 a.p. Its clauses were inserted at different 
times to assert the belief of the Church against various 
heresies. For our present purpose it need not be 
more closely examined. 

(i) Much more important for constructive theology 
is the creed adopted by the Council of Nicaea in 
A.D. 825 in condemnation of the heresy of Arius. 
This was an expansion of the creed of Caesarea 
presented to the Council by its bishop, Eusebius. 
The most important changes made are these: the 
clause mpwrdroxov waons xtioews was left out as 
an Arian sense could be put upon it, and there 
were added the explanatory clauses touréorw €k THs 
ovgias Tov watpos, yevvynbérvta, ov mounbévTa, dfroov- 
owuyv tm matpi. Christ was raised above the cate- 
gory of the creature, and declared to be begotten, 
not made, and consubstantial with the Father. It 
was the word époovc.wv which was the bone of 
contention in the subsequent controversies. The full 
and real divinity of Christ was asserted as the universal 
belief of the Church. 

(ii) What is now known as the Nicene Creed is, 


124 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


however, of later date. It is not certain that this 
can claim even to be the creed of the Council of 
Constantinople (A.D. 381), although the Council of 
Chalcedon (a.D. 451) did accept it as the creed of that 
Council. The difference between this and the former 
creed lies in the expansion of the eighth article, cai 
cis 7d Tvedpa Td “Aywov, to condemn the heresy of 
Macedonius and his followers, nicknamed ‘ Pheuaumato- 
machians,’ who repeated the heresy of Arius in regard 
to the Spirit, regarding Him as a creature subordinate 
to the Son. The following clauses were added: 70 
Kvpiov cat 7d Cworotoy, 7 ex Tod Harpos exmopevduevor 
7d oop Marpi Kal Tia cvpmrpooKvvovpevov kal ouvdoka- 
Cduevov, TO hartjoav bia tov mpopyntoav. There were 
also added clauses on the Church, baptism, the 
resurrection, and eternal life. The statement in 
this creed that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the 
Father, was afterwards at an uncertain date 
modified in the West by the addition of the Filioque 
clause, placing the Son on an equality with the Father. 
This was the most serious theological difference be- 
tween the East and the West, as the East in accordance 
with its Logos Christology tended always to the sub- 
ordination of the Son to the Father. It may be added 
that alike in the Macedonian heresy as in this, the 
orthodox condemnation of it, there was no independ- 
ent experimental interest in the doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit ; both were but a logical consequence of the 
Christological differences.* 

(iii) The Christological development was completed 
in the Creed of Chalcedon (a.p. 451). The perfect 
divinity of Christ is reasserted against Arianism, 
which was condemned at Nicaea in 325. The perfect 
humanity is maintained against Apollinaris, whose 
doctrine was condemned without mention of his name 
at the Synod of Alexandria in 362, the Synod of Rome 
in 377, and the Council of Constantinople in 381. 
Desiring to safeguard the unity of the person of Christ, 

1 The subject is dealt with in The Humiliation of Christ, by Bruce, The 


Doctrine of the Incarnation, by Ottley, The Person of Christ, by Mackintosh, 
and Dorner’s monumental work, The Doctrine of the Person of Christ. 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 125 


and the immutability of His will, Apollinaris denied 
that Christ had the human spirit or rational soul, 
the third constituent of human nature according 
to the current psychology: its place was taken by 
the divine Logos Himself. This, however, was con- 
demned as a heresy in the following clauses of the 
Chaleedonian formulae : Téhevov TOV QUTOV eV av Opuro- 
wyTt.. . avOpewrrov an Gas, TOV avr ov €k buxys hoyucns Kab 
OOpaTos... 0pL00UC LOY TOV avTov mpey Kara THY avOpwro- 
THTA, KATA TAVTA OmoLov HuLY Ywplis apaptias. The paral- 
lelism of the clauses referring to the humanity 
and the divinity shows that the Council was re- 
solved to assert the reality of the humanity. But 
granted complete manhood and complete Godhood, 
how can these be combined and function in one 
person ? Nestorius had attempted to deal with that 
problem, but his attempt had been condemned as a 
division of the person of Christ. Against him is 
directed the clause in the creed,! &a kat tov avrov 
Xpiorov, Titov rov Kvpuov, and the two adverbs, advaipérws 
(without division) and aywpiorws (never to be separ- 
ated). While the historical evidence and theological 
consistency demanded the maintenance of the com- 
pleteness of the two natures (human and divine) in 
the unity of the person, the tendency of piety was 
to let the humanity be absorbed in the divinity. 
This tendency found expression in Eutyches, who 
taught that Christ, while of two natures, is not i 
two, as after the Incarnation there 1s but one nature, 
the human being so absorbed into the divine that 
even His body was not consubstantial with ours. 
This monophysitism, as it was called, was condemned 
by the Council of Chalcedon ; but there is some doubt 
about the text of the clause directed again Eutyches. 
The Greek text in the record of the Councils runs 
ex Ovo dvcewy, a phrase Kutyches would have accepted 
readily. The text generally adopted is év 600 diceow, 
which asserts the permanence of the two natures. It 
has been conjectured that probably both clauses were 


* The text of these creeds will be found in a very handy form in the 
volume entitled De Fide et Symbole, edited by Heurtley. 


f 


126 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


used, Against Eutyches also are directed the two 
adverbs, acvyyvrws (without confusion) and arperres 
(without conversion). For our present purpose it is 
not at all necessary to follow the later developments 
of doctrine in the East in detail, except to call atten- 
tion very briefly to two questions of interest. The 
first was this: Does the will belong to the nature or 
tothe person? If to the former, then it logically follows 
that Christ had two wills (Dyothelitism) ; if the latter, 
then there was only one will (Monothelitism). But 
an intermediate position was possible; the will of each 
nature might be regarded as only a possibility, be- 
coming actuality only in the activity of the one person, 
and concurring therein. ‘The second was this: Must 
the human nature to be complete be personal, or can 
it become personal only in its union with the personal 
Logos? John of Damascus, whose name is usually 
associated with the solution of this problem, was 
anticipated by Leontius of Byzantium, who ‘* was the 
first who definitely maintained that the human nature 
of Christ is not dvutdararos (impersonal), nor on the 
other hand an independent izdaracis (person), but 
that it has its troornva: év TO doyo. + This view 
John developed, and he drew the consequences from 
this position, that there is an interchange of attributes, 
a circumincession (zepiyepyois), so that the human 
nature is deified (Ogacus tHs capkds). It must be 
observed, however, that the interchange is one-sided : 
the human nature is deified, the divine remains un- 
changed. ‘These are suggestive efforts to escape the 
dualism of natures which, despite the assertion of the 
unity of person, remained unresolved by the Creed of 
Chalcedon. 

(iv) One other creed, although it contributes nothing 
new, deserves notice. The Athanasian Creed elabor- 
ates the doctrine of the Trinity. No certainty can 
be reached as to its date and origin. It was probably 
composed in Gaul by one single author as a sermon. 
It makes the doctrine of the Incarnation and the 
Trinity appear as unintelligible as it can be made, 

1 Harnack’s History of Dogma, Eng. tr, iv. p. 233 note 3. 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 127 


and nevertheless it represents salvation as depending 
on the acceptance of its complicated and elaborate 
doctrine. It is scholastic theology, and not living 
religion. It has no connection with Athanasius, but 
shows the influence of the teaching of Augustine. 
Its details do not need to be discussed. 

(2) From the standpoint of Christian faith the 
ereeds are profoundly disappointing as regards both 
what is included and what is excluded. 

(i) The Apostles’ Creed is expressly an individual 
confession; and the Athanasian Creed declares that 
‘Whosoever would be saved, before all things it is 
necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which 
Faith, except any one do keep whole and undefiled, 
without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.’ The 
Catholic Faith is not the personal relation to Christ 
of the believer ; it is an ordinance of the Church which 
must be obeyed without any use of the individual 
intelligence, solely on the Church’s authority. In the 
Apostles’ Creed, a recital of facts past, present, and 
future about Jesus Christ, there are included articles 
which are difficulties for Christian faith to-day. ‘The 
virgin-birth, the descent to Hades, and the Second 
Advent, even if accepted, do not influence Christian 
thought and life to-day as when the creeds were framed. 
Each does indicate an essential element in Christian 
truth, the absolute sinlessness of Jesus, the complete 
efficacy of His sacrifice for the salvation of all the 
generations of men, whatever be the way in which the 
divine grace is brought within the reach of all, and 
the final triumph of Christ as the consummation of 
the present order of human history; but we do not 
express the truth in the same way as this creed. The 
Nicene and Chalcedonian Creeds are bishops’ and not 
laymen’s creeds, custodians of theology rather than 
guardians of faith. The doctrines of the unity-in- 
difference of the Godhead (the tri-unity), and of 
the unity of the real divinity and the real human- 
ity in the person of Christ, are truths for Christian 
faith; but the metaphysical formulae of the Athan- 
asian Creed cannot be enforced as a condition of 


128 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


salvation, if salvation depends on intelligent personal 
faith. 

(ii) The Nicene symbol does assert theologically 
what is an essential interest of faith. If the Christian 
salvation is real, God’s own act to save men, then 
Christ must be so immediately and intimately related 
to God that what He does God does in Him; and it 
is this assurance to faith that the formula about the 
oneness in substance of the Father and the Son seeks 
to give. Later the fitness of the metaphysical terms 
will be discussed ; but it must be here affirmed that 
the dispute was not merely about a diphthong, a verbal 
nicety, or a mental subtlety, as critics of the Christian 
Church have sometimes misrepresented it as being, 
but the issue was whether Christian theology was to 
become one of the mythologies, or the adequate inter- 
pretation of the final revelation of God and redemption 
of man. 

_~ (iii) No less of interest for Christian faith are the 
‘yeality and completeness of the manhood of Jesus 
Christ and the unity of His person. We must sym- 
pathise with Apollinaris in his attempt to make more 
real the unity of the person of Christ, even although 
his inadequate psychology led him in so doing to 
sacrifice the completeness of the manhood. With 
Nestorius too, we must sympathise in his endeavour 
to maintain the completeness of the manhood, even 
although the ambiguity of the terms he used exposed 
him, it would now seem wrongly, to the charge of 
denying the unity of the person. His inadequate 
conception of personality, however, prevented his 
stating that unity in such a way as would satisfy our 
thought to-day. But the creed which condemned 
him was no more successful in solving the problem. 
Eutychianism was really a greater danger to Chris- 
tian faith than either Apollinarianism or Nestorianism, 
for it would have severed the metaphysical creed from 
the historical basis in the actual life of Christ on earth, 
or faith from fact. Nevertheless, he was carrying to 
its logical conclusion the dominant tendency of the 
Christian piety of his age. Cyril’s defence against 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 129 


Nestorius of the term @eordxos as applied to the 
mother of Jesus shows how completely the humanity 
was being absorbed in the divinity—the historical 
in the metaphysical. Eutychianism endangered a 
vital interest of Christian thought and life that God 
was manifest as man, even as Arius brought into peril 
no less a concern for Christianity, that it was God 
Himself who was so manifest for the salvation of man. 
The failure of the creeds to present concretely the 
personal unity of God and man in Christ was due on 
the one hand to their ignoring the facts of the earthly 
life of Jesus, His moral character and religious con- 
sciousness—which give content to the abstract con- 
ceptions of divinity and humanity, and in that 
content also indicate the actuality of the personal 
unity—and on the other hand to the inadequate 
conception of personality. Historically and philo- 
sophically alike we are in a better position to-day in 
our Christology to meet the demands of faith for an 
intelligible and credible presentation of the person 
of Christ. 

(3) The creeds include what is doubtful from the 
historical standpoint, and omit what is certain. The 
writer has already expressed his view in dealing with 
the fact of Christ regarding the virgin-birth and the 
resurrection. As regards the descent into Hades and 
the Second Advent, while it is impossible to take 
either conception with prosaic literalness, yet each, 
as has been indicated, expresses a truth for Christian 
faith. A problem which this recital of historical facts 
in the Apostles’ Creed raises has already been fully 
dealt with. In the Introduction of this volume it has 
been shown that Christian faith is not concerned solely 
with religious ideas and moral ideals, divorced from 
historical facts; but that the redemptive revelation 
of God is by the historical personality of Jesus Christ. 
It is not the defect, but the merit of the Apostles’ 
Creed, therefore, that it deals with historical facts. 
It asserts those facts which were being challenged or 
denied; but the omissions show that there was one 
aspect of the historical reality of Jesus Christ for which 

I 


130 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


the age from which the creed has come had little 
appreciation, and yet it is that aspect which most 
potently appeals to-day—the earthly ministry of 
Jesus, and the grace and truth therein manifested. 
While the completeness of the human nature was 
asserted in metaphysical terms, the living image of 
Jesus was not present to faith, for His personal ex- 
perience as man was not being explored by Christian 
thought, because the soteriology of the time required 
only a human nature, and did not need to discover 
the meaning of the Wilderness, Gethsemane, and 
Calvary. 

(4) As the purpose of this volume is to offer a Christ- 
ology and a soteriology acceptable to modern thinking, 
reason must be shown why the metaphysical formulae 
of the creeds cannot satisfy us to-day. We must 
closely examine the terms used, which were borrowed 
from ancient philosophy, but had also their meaning 
modified in being so used. What follows will, how- 
ever, not be a merely verbal discussion, as words 
stand for thoughts, and the scrutiny of language will 
make clearer the thought to which it gives expression. 

(i) The most crucial of all the terms is opoovevor, 
which is explained in the phrase €« 77s ovoias Tov 
Ilarpés. (a) The term époovo.v means of the same 
ousia. The term ovoia is itself ambiguous. It 
may mean either an entity, the subject of attributes, 
or a class, species, or genus. As applied to man, for 
instance, it may mean this or that man, or man (in- 
cluding all men). Athanasius did not mean that 
Christ was an individual divine being, belonging to 
the same class of divine beings as the Father. That 
would have been polytheism, and he was combating 
polytheism in resisting Arianism. Neither did he 
mean that Christ and God the Father were one in- 
dividual subject, for that would have been a relapse 
into the modalism which had been condemned as a 
heresy, and which by conservative theologians was 
thought to lurk in the term 6poovo.rv. He meant 
neither separation from nor identity with the Father ; 
but a relation of difference in unity. His meaning 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 131 


was intermediate between a qualitative similarity and 
a quantitative identity, between belonging to the 
same class and being the one subject. Accordingly, 
neither of the meanings of the word ovcia is carried 
over unchanged in his use of the word dépoovctov. 
The rival word, opovovawv, would serve no better, 
as it would not affirm even that Christ belonged to 
the divine class. 

(b) Without intention the Creed of Chalcedon takes 
advantage of the ambiguity of the term in using it 
for Christ’s relation to man as well as to God. Here 
it cannot mean identity of subject, 1t can mean only 
inclusion in one class, as the subsequent phrase xara 
TAVTA Gpotov Huty xywpis apaptias clearly indicates. 
Christ is not one with us as He is with the Father, 
but like us as belonging to the same species. That 
the term in both cases means exactly the same 
can be maintained only on the basis of a highly 
speculative theory of the relation of mankind to Christ, 
namely that He as Son of God, the image of God, the 
firstborn of the Creation, is the transition from God to 
man, and as such the root out of which, as it were, 
mankind grows. It is to be noted, however, that the 
New Testament does not teach a metaphysical unity, 
but a moral and religious union of the Vine and the 
branches. 

(c) Does the phrase é« 77s ovotas tov Tarpds in any 
way remove the ambiguity ? The Chalcedon Creed 
offers this further explanation : 7p6 aidvar éx Tod Tatpos 
yervyPévra kata THY OedTyTa, and é€x Mapias THs Tapbévov 
TS BeotoKov Kata THY avOpwmotyra. The statement of 
the Athanasian Creed runs: * Deus est ex substantia 
Patris ante saecula genitus: Homo ex substantia 
Matris in saeculo natus.’ While there is here again 
the same endeavour to preserve a parallelism between 
the relation to the Father and to man, the same term 
is used in twosenses. Generation out of the substance 
of the Father expresses, in the intention of the creed, 
distinction, but not separation: generation out of 
the substance of the mother involves separation. The 
language itself does not guard the unity of the Father 


182 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


and the Son. Again, the term generation, even when 
qualified by eternal, does suggest separation of one 
individual from another. The term substance in the 
Athanasian Creed, when applied to the mother, means 
something more distinctly physical than its proper 
meaning as applied to God can bear. If we may use 
physical analogies, the relation of Christ to God is 
like that of a branch to a plant rather than of an off- 
spring to a parent, for the branches abide in the plant 
as the offspring does not in the parent. If the relation 
of Christ to His mother was only according to the 
manhood, the phrase trys SeordKov is manifestly 
inconsistent, as she bore man, not God. Even if the 
explanation be offered that she bore man so closely 
united to God that He could be called God, never- 
theless the term is a concession to the monophysite 
tendency not in accord with the general intention of 
the creeds, which is to distinguish Godhood and man- 
hood in Christ, while maintaining a parallelism of 
relation to the one and the other by a use of terms 
which a closer scrutiny proves to be ambiguous. 

(ii) Another ambiguous term used in the creeds is 
dio. In the phrase év dvo0 diceou, or éx dv0 dicewr, 
it seems to mean the same as ovoia. In popular 
speech nature and substance are not clearly dis- 
tinguished, but there is a difference, as between man- 
hood and mankind or the man, to use an illustration. 
The substance is that which exists; the nature is the 
sum of the qualities of the person or the thing. It 
was easy to substitute the what for the that, to use 
a distinction Greek thought made. Owing to this 
ambiguity we may deceive ourselves into thinking 
that we are in closer agreement with the creeds than 
we really are. When we speak of ‘two natures in 
one person,’ we think of one subject combining the 
qualities of God and man; they meant, until later 
refinements sought to meet the difficulty, two sub- 
stances or subjects in one person, as the dispute about 
one or two wills showed. We so identify substance 
or subject and person that we cannot, therefore, think 
of two subjects—God and man functioning in one 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 133 


person, although we can think of one person function- 
ing both as God and as man, owing to the affinity of 
nature and community of purpose between God and 
man. ‘This interpretation of the Chalcedonian Creed 
is confirmed by the Athanasian, ‘ Unus omnino, non 
confusione substantiae, sed Unitate Personae.’ It is 
two substances or subjects, and not two natures, that 
the Creed of Chalcedon intends to describe as united, 
unmixed, unchanged, undivided, not to be separated. 

(111) Hach of these adverbs deserves study. (a) By 
the first, avvyyvrws, we are forbidden to think of any 
blending of the qualities of the two natures, Godhood 
and manhood, for the two subjects, God and man, 
stand apart. The contrary view would involve a 
heresy, ‘by this confusion teaching the monstrous 
doctrine that the divine nature of the only-begotten 
is passible.’ While the man in Christ suffered, it is 
regarded by these fathers as monstrous to believe 
that the God in Him suffered with the man. This is 
a survival of Greek philosophy which hindered an 
understanding of the Gospel story. 

(b) The second adv erb, atpérrws, forbids our think- 
ing that the Incarnation made any difference in God 
or man, involved any humiliation of the one, any 
exaltation of the other. Paul’s words in Phil. i. 7, 
cavtov éxevwoev, ‘ He emptied Himself,’ would be rank 
error. This is the static view of Greek philosophy, 
while the Scriptural and the modern view is dynamic. 
We can and must think of God, not as fixed substance, 
but as living Spirit. 

(c) The third and fourth adverbs, aé.aipérws and 
axwpiotws, may be taken together as emphasising one 
idea—the unity of Christ’s person against Nestorius, 
or at least what Nestorius was supposed to teach. 
The framers of the creed, in thus asserting the two 
unchanged, unmixed natures against Hutyches and 
Apollinaris, make it very difficult for us to under- 
stand how they can have conceived concretely the 
unity of the person, on which against Nestorius they 
also insist. We can think of Christ as one only as we 
recognise the resemblance and communion between 


134 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


God and man, the communicativeness of divine grace 
and the receptiveness of human faith. The incon- 
sistencies of the creed show that abstract philosophical 
formulae cannot do justice to concrete historical 
reality. 

(iii) We can learn still more the inadequacy of this 
dogmatic formulation if we study the two words used 
for person, mpdcwmov aud bréaracts. Ancient philo- 
sophy, which was objective, asking what do we know, 
and not, as modern is subjective, inquiring how we 
know, had not forméd any proper conception of 
personality. It was Christianity which so developed 
the moral conscience and the religious consciousness 
as to make the new conception necessary ; and in the 
creeds we find the attempt to get the fit words for the 
new thought. (a) The term zpocw7ov means face, 


countenance, or expression of the face, appearance 


as regards condition or circumstance; it may mean 


,/also the actor’s mask or réle, a function or an office 
‘ discharged. Sabellianism applied the term to the 


Ne 


three modes of the revelation of the Godhead, Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit. ~Nestorius was prepared to 
confess that Christ in His Godhood and His manhood 
was one prosopon. Bethune-Baker accordingly main- 
tains that he was not guilty of the heresy for which 
he was condemned; but Loofs has properly pointed 
out that when he used the term he did not mean what 
a modern thinker would mean when using the term 
person, nor what his orthodox opponents meant, for 
they were putting a new content into the term.!' This 
term, when applied in the doctrine of the Godhead 
to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has not advanced so 
far in its change of meaning as when used of Christ. 
(b) To avoid the old associations of the term zpocwzor, 
and to assert the new meaning which was being put 
into it, the opponents of Nestorius insisted on the use 
of the term wrdcracis as its equivalent, and this 
Nestorius refused to do, and in so doing was un- 
doubtedly justified by the older usage of the term. 


1 See Nestorius and his Teaching, by Bethune-Baker, and Nestorius and 
his Place in the history of Christian Doctrine, by Loofs. 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 135 


He used_it as equivalent to ovata for substance. It 
is so used in the anathemas attached to the Nicene 
Creed in the phrase ¢€ érépas vroortdcews 7) ovoias, 
and Athanasius asserted the identity of the meaning 
of the two terms. Some of the Greek theologians 
had come to use the term as equivalent to tpdcwrov 
in the doctrine of the Godhead, and this use had 
found general, if not universal, acceptance. Nestorius 
himself recognises it. It had not, however, been 
previously used of the person of Christ, and Nestorius, 
therefore, was not an innovator, but a conservative, 
in his refusal to use it in this new sense. Cyril, 
Nestorius’ opponent, was not himself above reproach 
in respect of his use; and it may be he served his 
own purpose in using a term of ambiguous meaning 
to cover his own monophysite tendency, as ¢vo.s and 
UmoaTacis very nearly coalesced in meaning. It was 
this covert monophysitism which Nestorius believed 
himself to be combating in refusing to use the term. 
For this he is not to be blamed. He had not, 
however, reached a conception of the person of 
Christ which would include the full recognition of the 
unity which the creed, however imperfectly, aimed 
at affirming. 

(v) It is interesting to observe that the same terms 
came to have different meanings as they were used 
in the doctrine of the Trinity or of the person of 
Christ. Identical as the terms hypostasis and ousta 
(Latin subsistentia and substantia) were in meaning 
to begin with, owsta came to be used to express the 
unity of the Godhead, and hypostasis the unity of 
the person of Christ. Hypostasis expresses the trinity 
in the Godhead, and owsza the duality in the person 
of Christ. In the one case we have three hypostases 
in the one ousia: in the other two ousiai in one 
hypostasis. Or, using the equivalent of hypostasts, 
person, we are asked, nay, even required, by the 
Athanasian Creed, on pain of damnation if we don’t, 
to confess three persons in one substance in the 
Godhead, and two substances (modified usually to 
natures) in one person in Christ. If we use the word 


186 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


person in the same sense as regards the Godhead as 
we do as regards Christ, we deny the divine unity 
and fall into tritheism. If we use the word substance 
in the same sense as regards Christ as we do as regards 
the Godhead, we deny the unity of His person, and 
fall into dualism. The creeds maintain an unstable 
equilibrium between the differences and the unity 
alike in the Godhead and in Christ. 


Il 


Without following the history of the doctrine of 
Christ in the subsequent centuries, it will serve the 
purpose of this volume to prepare for the constructive 
statement which the writer intends to attempt by a 
consideration of the modifications of these creeds in 
the Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxy, and also the 
attempts so to modify this dogmatic formulation as 
to bring it into closer harmony with modern historical 
scholarship in the kenotic theories. | 

(1) While Socianism challenged the teaching of the 
creeds regarding the nature of God and the person of 
Christ, the Reformers accepted the cecumenical creeds. 
Their religious standpoint did not require any change ; 
they could fit their fresh apprehension of the Christian 
salvation into this old framework. Their historical 
position also made it politic that they should claim 
to be ‘ orthodox’ according to the definition of these 
cecumenical Councils, while rejecting the accretions 
of Roman Catholicism. It was impossible, however, 
to avoid all modification in the restatement of the 
old dogmas, for that restatement must needs be 
affected by the new thought and life. The difference 
between the Lutheran and the Reformed type of 
Protestantism, both as regards the dominant religious 
interest, and especially as regards the view taken of 
the Lord’s Supper, affected the Christology, so that 
we can distinguish the Lutheran and the Reformed.* 

(i) While there is danger in generalisations, the 


1 A very valuable account of the Lutheran and Reformed Christologies is 
given in Lecture III. in Dr. A. B. Bruce’s The Humiliation of Christ. 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 137 


contrast may be described as follows: For Lutheran- 
ism the question was, How can I be saved? for 
Calvinism, the dominant force in the Reformed 
Churches, it was rather, How is God’s will fulfilled ? 
Although both assigned absolute authority to the 
Bible, for Luther it was the tutor unto Christ, for 
Calvin it was the legislator, revealing the purpose of 
God. Luther kept from Roman Catholicism all that 
did not conflict with his original experience of the 
grace of Christ; Calvin gave up all that could not be 
justified from the Holy Scriptures. The one laid 
stress on the Gospel, and subordinated the Law to 
the Gospel; the other tended to conceive the Gospel 
even as Law. The one was conservative, moving 
only under the compulsion of personal conviction ; 
the other was radical, following whithersoever the 
word of the Lord might lead. The one met individual 
needs; the other claimed social authority. Conse- 
quently Calvinism has been a much more potent factor 
in modern history than Lutheranism. 

(11) It is one of the tragedies of the Christian Church 
that when unity was most necessary to Protestantism 
it was sacrificed to a dispute about the doctrine of 
the Eucharist. It was the scholastic dogmatist, sur- 
viving in Luther despite his conversion, that made 
him take the words of institution with a prosaic 
literalness, and insist on the real presence of the body 
and blood of Christ in, with, and wnder the bread and 
the wine. His doctrine is called that of consubstantva- 
tion : the elements are not changed, the body and blood 
of Christ are not included in the bread and the wine, 
nor are the bread and wine mixed with the body and 
blood; but during the administration there is such 
a union that the whole Christ is received by the 
communicant. Zwingli admitted a presence of Christ 
‘in the contemplation of faith.’ The Eucharist is 
not merely a memorial, it is also a pledge of the grace 
of Christ, even as a ring is in marriage. Calvin tried 
to get nearer the Lutheran position. He rejected the 
doctrine of consubstantiation, the objective presence 
of the body and blood of Christ in, with, and under 


138 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


the elements, as he held that the glorified body was 
in heaven. But he maintained that Christ is received 
spiritually by the believer as he partakes of the 
elements ; Christ presents His body and blood to the 
believer, and by the energy of His Spirit communicates 
power, a power which is the mysterious source of a 
spiritual body which will appear at the Resurrection. 
Without attempting to discuss these theological subtle- 
ties, the difference of the two doctrines may be thus 
stated. Luther had to affirm the ubiquity of the body 
of Christ so as to secure that objective presence in the 
sacraments. Calvin, although in his desire to con- 
ciliate the Lutherans he does not maintain his position 
consistently, could not admit such a presence, as he 
thought of the body of Christ as subject to the condi- 
tions of space, as localised in heaven. Luther’s posi- 
tion involved a deification of even the body of Christ, 
a transference to it of the divine quality of omni- 
presence; and his Christology was a reversion to 
Kutychianism or Monophysitism. Calvin’s position, 
with its insistence on the continuance of the human 
qualities, even after the glorification, was a movement 
rather towards Nestorianism. However extravagant 
may seem some of the assertions of the Lutheran 
Christology, it can be understood only as we always 
recognise that it was an attempt to find a metaphysic 
which would justify the view of the Lord’s Supper, a 
view which Luther honestly and passionately believed 
he must maintain to preserve his own assurance of 
the forgiveness of sin. 

(2) The presence of the body and blood of Christ in, 
with, and under the elements involved its ubiquity. 
This Luther explained by the theory of the com- 
munication of the attributes of one nature to another. 
Christ is at the right hand of God, which means 
everywhere; and wherever He is present, His whole 
humanity is. Luther introduced in stating this view 
the scholastic distinction of the threefold mode of 
presence: the local or circumspective, a presence in 
one place and not elsewhere, the definitive, or a 
presence wherever willed, and the repletive, equi- 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 139 


valent to ubiquity or omnipresence. Lutheran Christ- 
ology advanced from this starting point. 

(1) The first problem discussed was the consequences 
of the union of the two natures in one person. Brentz 
and Chemnitz both started from the assumption of 
the communication to the human nature of divine 
attributes, but Brentz carried out this principle with 
logical consistency, regardless of consequences, whereas 
Chemnitz, having some regard to the historical reality, 
carried it out only partially, and so with less con- 
sistency. 

(a) Brentz asserted the mutual communication of 
attributes without any such qualification ‘as far as 
he is capable,’ for Christ was made capable of receiving 
all divine properties without any exception whatever. 
He developed only one side of this mutual communica- 
tion, the deifying of the humanity. It is true that 
he conceded that the humanity possessed only a 
communicated divinity, and was made equal to God, 
not in being (ovata), but only in authority (é€ovcig). 
As regards the body of Jesus he maintained that a 
body can exist locally, but also illocally, and that to 
be tn loco is not essential, but accidental to body. 
During the earthly life His body existed both in loco, 
here and there, and in Logo, that is, everywhere. 
The humanity of Christ was invested with divinity 
from the moment of incarnation, which was itself an 
invisible ascension. The earthly Christ combined 
two humanities, a humbled one and an exalted one; 
but the omnipresence was invisible, and the omni- 
science and omnipotence were dissimulated. ‘ Majes- 
tatem humanitas, tempore exinanitionis, suo modo 
dissimulavit.’ 

(b) Chemnitz maintained that the communication 
of the divine attributes to the human nature was 
limited by the principle that each nature must pre- 
serve its essential properties, that jfinitum non est 
capax infiniti. Not only the earthly but even the 
heavenly body must be in loco, and Christ is not 
usually present in His Church bodily. The human 
nature was not endowed with divine properties, but 


140 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


rather pervaded by the divine, which used it as its 
organ, and exerted energy in, with, and through it. 
‘ Divina virtus et potentia majestatis et omnipotentiae 
suae opera in assumpta natura cum illa, et per illam 
exerceat et perficiat.’ His watchword is that of John 
of Damascus, wepyydpyois, and his image the mass of 
heated iron. How scholastic this Lutheran develop- 
ment became is shown by the way in which he works 
out in detail the modes of communication. In the 
genus idiomaticum the subject is the whole person, 
in concreto, and the predicate the property of either 
nature, e.g. Christ knew and revealed the Father, or 
Christ died. In the genus apotelismaticum, the sub- 
ject is either nature and the predicate an activity 
pertaining to the work of redemption in which both 
natures concur, e.g. the Son of God endured the Cross. 
In the genus majestaticum or auchematicum the divine 
perfection is ascribed realiter to the human nature, 
e.g. the Son of man sits at God’s right hand. It has 
been noted that one mode is lacking, what might be 
called the genus tapeinoticum, the acceptance by the 
divine of human properties, such as suffering and 
death as stated in Phil. 11. 6-8. It was about the third 
genus that there was difference between the Lutheran 
and the Reformed theologians. Chemnitz does not 
affirm ubiquity in the unqualified way of Brentz. 
He holds that Christ is able to be present when, where, 
and how He pleases, even in invisible form. He 
teaches, not a necessary omnipresence, but a hypo- 
thetical or optional multipresence. He grounds this 
teaching not only on the words, ‘This is My body,’ 
but also on a legitimate deduction from the union of 
natures, Logos non eatra carnem et caro non extra logon ; 
this for the Lutherans was essential to the reality of 
incarnation. The doctrine of Chemnitz may be dis- 
tinguished from that of Brentz as follows. For 
Brentz the state of exinanition consisted in possession, 
with habitual furtive use, of majesty ; for Chemnitz in 
possession with occasional use and prevailing non-use. 
The latter even inclines to adopt Ambrose’s idea of the 
retraction of the Logos, that is, a defective possession. 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 141 


(c) The Formula of Concord (a.p. 1580) tried to 
settle the controversy by a compromise. The ex- 
altation of the human nature to divine majesty from 
thevery conception is asserted (the birth beinginviolata 
ipsius virginitate). Possession without use (kenosis) 
and possession with furtive use (krypsis), and also 
a hypothetical and a necessary omnipresence, are 
taught. No notice is taken of the distinction between 
the presence of the human nature to the Logos, and 
to the world. Such a compromise settled nothing, 
and so the quarrel went on till the Tibingen-Giessen 
controversy broke out. 

(11) The watchwords of this controversy were kenosis 
and krypsis, and the combatants were concerned 
about the nature of the humiliation in an endeavour 
to harmonise Christology with historical fact. While 
possession of the divine majesty even in the state of 
humiliation was admitted, the difference lay in the 
question of use or non-use of divine properties; the 
Giessen theologians held the kenotic, the Tiibingen 
the kryptic position. The Giessen theologians con- 
tended for the distinction between the two kinds of 
presence of the body, to the Logos and to the world, 
and maintained that the second depended on the first. 
The Tiibingen school held that the distinction was 
imaginary, and that potential omnipresence was an 
absurdity. The Giessen school tried to meet this 
objection by distinguishing the operative and the 
inoperative attributes, and applied this distinction 
to the ubiquity. God is free in His action, and is, 
therefore, free to be present in the world or not as 
He pleases. The use of presence is a matter of free 
will, ‘usurpatio praesentiae est liberrimae voluntatis.’ 
The Tiibingen school following Brentz were dominated 
by theory ; the Giessen following Chemnitz had more 
regard to fact, and tried by such assumptions to bring 
theory nearer fact. The assumption of voluntary 
absence or presence involves the principle of God’s 
free self-limitation, a principle of primary importance 
for modern theology. 

(ii) A few comments on this Lutheran Christology 


142 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


may be offered. Furst of all, the principle of the 
communication of properties (¢dtomata) is arbitrarily 
applied: the divine majesty is communicated to the 
humanity, but not the human limitations to the 
divinity. Secondly, although this was not the in- 
tention the logical consequence of the theory is the 
extinction of the reality of the humanity. The com- 
munication should have been limited to the gifts and 
graces which human nature is capable of receiving. 
Thirdly, while the humiliation is admitted as necessary 
from the standpoint of soteriology, it being needful 
that the Saviour of men should become like unto His 
brethren, the Christology makes it virtually impos- 
sible, as the distinction between the possession and 
the use of the divine attributes does not safeguard 
the reality of the humiliation. Fourthly, while the 
fact of exinanition is in theory admitted, it remains 
an effect without a cause, for from the beginning the 
Logos is united to a humanity endowed with the 
divine attributes. The only way in which a cause 
for this effect could be found would be in the theory of 
a pre-existent divine humanity voluntarily humbling 
itself to a state of exinanition. Fifthly, while this 
doctrine aims at the deification of the humanity, it 
really denies the Incarnation, for it makes the humanity 
unreal. Svaihly, the attempts made by Chemnitz and 
his followers to modify the dominant conceptions in 
order to get nearer historical reality were ineffective, 
because the starting-point is not from history, as it 
should be, but from a theory, and a very arbitrary 
and artificial theory, as to the presence of Christ in 
the Eucharist. Lastly, the Lutheran Christology has 
an interest and importance for the constructive 
theology inasmuch as it works out in detail with 
logical consistency the dogmatic formulation of the 
doctrine of the Incarnation. In its extreme form it 
may be taken even as a reductio ad absurdum of the 
principles of the creeds, and so a call to a recon- 
sideration of these. 

(3) The Reformed Christology is not so speculative as 
the Lutheran, and keeps nearer to the facts of history. 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 1438 


(1) Calvin did not insist on terms, if only the essential 
elements of doctrine were retained. He would gladly 
have given up the terms person and trinity so long as 
the truth was affirmed that Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit are one God, yet each distinguished by some 
peculiar property. Since the original cause—prin- 
cipium et origo—is in the Father, the name God is 
specially appropriate to the Father ; and this pre- 
serves the order of persons without taking anything 
from the deity of the Son and the Spirit. He was 
anxious to steer a straight course between Arianism 
and Sabelhanism. That he gave the attention to the 
doctrine of the Trinity which he did shows the greater 
theological thoroughness of Calvinism. 

(11) For the Reformed Christology incarnation was 
itself humiliation, while it was admitted that there 
might have been an incarnation in exaltation. The 
theory is well stated in the Admonitio Christiana 
(1581), which was an answer to the Formula of Concord. 
(a) For man’s salvation the eternal Son of God 
assumed into the unity of His person a nature truly 
human, consisting of a rational soul and a human body. 
(b) While thus closely related these natures are not 
changed, or mixed, or confused, but remain distinct 
while united, and retain their respective essential 
properties. (c) The union endows the human mind 
and will with gifts surpassing those of all men and 
angels, yet it ever remains finite in the divine view, 
and can never be equal to the essential power, wisdom, 
and virtue of God. (d) Because of this union, what- 
ever is said of Christ is said truly and really of the 
whole undivided person, sometimes in respect of both 
natures, sometimes in respect of the one or the other. 
The former holds when the predicate has reference 
to Christ’s office, as He is Mediator, Redeemer, Inter- 
cessor, King, Priest, Prophet, in respect both of the 
Deity and the Humanity, and each nature performs 
its proper part in all official acts. The latter holds 
when the predicate has reference to a peculiar property 
or operation of one of the natures. Thus it can be 
said that God was born, died, etc., only in respect of 


144 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


the human nature, and again that the man Christ 
Jesus is omnipotent, omnipresent, in virtue, not of 
His humanity, but of His divinity. The predication, 
however, is real and not verbal in consequence of 
the union. (e) The distinction between the two states 
is, as regards the divinity, that of partial concealment 
and of open manifestation, but as regards the human- 
ity the state of exaltation involves the loss of some 
accidental properties possessed in the state of humilia- 
tion, the perfect development of others, and the 
retention of the essential properties, e.g. the glorified 
body as a body is localised in heaven. 

(iii) This statement calls for some comment. (a) 
The natures appear to be placed in juxtaposition — 
without any real union (gemina substantia, mens, 
robur et virtus). The act of union by the Logos is 
described as a secret and inscrutable vinculum. It 
is the divine person of the Logos who unites Himself 
to the human nature. (b) The effort was indeed made 
to make the communication between the natures a 
reality by two media. rst, there was the ascription 
to the Son of God on the one hand, in virtue of the 
personal union, of participation in the sufferings of 
the humanity ; and on the other hand there was the 
doctrine adopted from Aquinas, of the communication 
of charisms to the human nature, fitting it to be the 
companion and the organ of deity. The latter was, 
however, limited by the axiom /finttum non capax 
infiniti. While valuable religiously as supporting the 
truth of the homoousia of Christ with His brethren. 
it has its theoretical difficulties. Why should the 
operation of the Spirit be necessary to effect what 
from the Lutheran point of view seemed a necessary 
effect of the union? An attempt to meet the objec- 
tion is found in the phrase, ‘ by the Logos through the 
Spirit,’ which seeks to express a moral influence rather 
than a physical result. ‘The influence was not 
physical,’ says Schneckenburger,' ‘but moral, de- 
pending on the will, but the will of the Logos was to 
give room for a purely human development and 


1 Vergleichende Darstellung, ii. 239-40, quoted by Bruce, op. cit., p. 125. 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 145 


activity.’ (c) The exinanition applied to the divine 
nature ; the Son of God emptied Himself in becoming 
man; but this kenosis was an emptying as to use 
and manifestation, not as to possession: it was an 
occultatto. Whether the occultation was to the world 
only, or to the consciousness of Jesus also, is not made 
clear. If the latter, a double life of the Logos would 
be involved. Some retraction of divine power is 
recognised. (d) The likeness of Christ’s humanity to 
that of man in all respects, sin excepted, is affirmed 
distinctly. Some of the earlier theologians were not 
quite consistent here. Zanchius, for instance, as- 
cribed to Jesus’ soul the perfect vision of all things 
in God. Hulsius, however, thought that on earth 
Jesus was vialor, not comprehensor. This is the char- 
acteristic Reformed doctrine. (e) Had the Reformed 
Christology not been committed to certain categories 
of thought by the dogmatic formulation, its greater 
historic sense and its soteriological interest would have 
led it towards a much more satisfactory doctrine of the 
Incarnation than the Lutheran, with its distinctive 
presuppositions, could have reached. As it 1s, to use 
its own terms, it remained viator, and did not attain 
as comprehensor of the Truth. 


Lil 


The Lutheran and the Reformed Christologies 
developed the ecclesiastical dogma of the person of 
Christ in dealing with the problem of the relation of 
the two natures or substances in the one person. 
The Creed of Chalcedon had affirmed the reality, 
completeness, and differences of the two natures, and 
the unity of the persons, but had not attempted to 
show how natures ew hypothest so different could 
remain real and complete within such a unity. The 
Kutychian and the Nestorian tendencies were inevi- 
table with these presuppositions. John of Damascus, 
following Leontius of Byzantium, did endeavour to 
make the unity intelligible in a monophysite direc- 
tion, for an impersonal humanity assumed by the 

K 


146 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


divine person of the Logos is God rather than man. 
This same tendency Lutheranism followed under the 
influence of its view of the presence of Christ in the 
Eucharist. Calvinism, on the other hand, with its 
emphasis on the difference of God and man, moved in 
the Nestorian direction, but was also affected by its 
ereater regard for historical reality. 

(1) This too was one of the motives of the movement 
to modify the orthodox Christology by the theory of 
the kenosis, for which Scriptural authority was found 
in Phil. 11. 6-8.1. A more immediate motive was found 
in the desire to harmonise the Lutheran and Reformed 
Christologies to facilitate efforts at ecclesiastical re- 
union. Regarding this movement two considerations 
must be kept in view. Firstly, the orthodox Christ- 
ology was assumed, and the modifications attempted 
used its categories. Secondly, these kenotic theories 
differed from the earlier kenotic views in asserting 
not only a non-use in the state of humiliation of the 
divine prerogatives, etc., as did the Giessen theologians, 
but even a partial or complete non-possession. An 
examination of these theories is important for our 
present purpose, as the unsatisfactory solution of the 
problem in these theories will force on us the question 
whether a constructive theology must not frankly 
and fully abandon the metaphysical conceptions and 
terms of the orthodox Christology. The motive and 
the method of this movement have been well stated 
by Faut.? ‘ Essentially under the influence of the 
Biblical witness to Jesus, the real man, there resulted 
the new forms of the Christological dogma in the 
doctrine of the kenosis of the God-man. This, re- 
jected as a heresy by the confessions, was generally 
recognised as churchly because Biblical. It was not 
a systematic interest to add the genus tapeinoticum 
to the genus majestatucum in the Lutheran doctrine 
of the communicatio rdiomatum that led to this 
modification, but the desire to do justice to the his- 
torical person of Jesus. Not rationalism only but 


* See Lecture IV. in Bruce’s The Humiliation of Christ. 
* Die Christologie seit Schleiermacher, p. 7. 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 147 


Christian piety fixed attention on history. The 
question put was, How can the God-man be real 
man? The answer was the doctrine of the kenosis 
of the Logos. The doctrine of the God-man as 
the second person of the Godhead was assumed as 
a changeless truth of faith. There seemed to be no 
other possibility of understanding the earthly human 
life of Jesus than the assumption of a self-emptying 
of the God-man for the end of the Incarnation. ‘The 
Formula of Concord had rejected this thought as a 
blasphemy with regard to the changelessness of God. 
It was a serious step which churchly theologians took, 
and it is to be understood only as a proof of the helpless 
condition in which the assumption of the ecclesiastical 
dogma places us.’ 

(2) What were the problems for thought involved 
could not be better stated than they have been by 
Dr. Bruce.t. ‘When this general idea has been 
announced, three questions may be asked regarding 
it. Furst, is the depotentiation relaivve or absolute ? 
That is to say, does it take place simply as far as the 
Incarnation is concerned, leaving the Logos per se 
still in possession of His divine attributes; or does 
it take place without restriction or qualification, so 
that pro tempore at least, from the moment of birth 
till the moment of exaltation, the second person of 
the Trinity is denuded of everything pertaining to 
deity but its bare, naked, indestructible essence ? 
Second, in what relation does the depotentiated Logos 
stand to the man Jesus? Is He the soul of the man, 
or is there a human soul in the man over and above ? 
Is the Logos metamorphosed into a human soul, or 
is He simply self-reduced to the dimensions of a human 
soul in order that, when placed side by side with a 
human soul, He may not by His majesty consume the 
latter and render all its functions impossible ? Third, 
how far does the depotentiation or metamorphosis, as 
the case may be, go within the person of the Incarnate 
One? Is it partial, or is it complete ? Does it make 
Christ to all intents and purposes a mere man, or 


1 The Humiliation of Christ, p. 137. 


148 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


does it leave Him half man, half God, in some respects 
human, in other respects superhuman? All these 
questions have been variously answered by different 
writers.’ 

(3) Into the details of the varying theories it 1s not 
at all necessary to enter, as all of them must be 
rejected on the following grounds :— 

(a) The use of the word kevdw by Paul in Phil. i. 7 
is far too slender a basis for such a structure of 
speculation. In the-discussion of that passage in 
a previous chapter the intellectual difficulties which 
Paul’s own presentation involves have already been 
indicated. It affords a very shaky foundation for 
any theological theory which may be built upon it. 

(b) The theory of the depotentiation of the Logos by 
His own temporal act is a speculation which 1s too 
high for us; we cannot attain it. It is one thing to 
start from the historical facts, which demand that we 
should lay stress on the human limitations of the 
person of Christ, and justify us in inferring that in the 
Incarnation there must be involved a self-limitation 
on the part of God; and quite another to begin with 
the orthodox dogma of the Trinity, and, using the 
term person in a much more individual sense than 
any just interpretation of the intentions of the creeds 
allows, to ascribe speculatively to one person of the 
Godhead a surrender, total or partial, of the divine 
prerogatives belonging to Him. Rightly does Ritschl* 
say, ‘It is nothing else than mythology, what is 
taught under the name of the kenosis of the divine 
Logos,’ and this mythology exposes its own futility. 
‘It confesses openly,’ says Ritschl, * that we cannot 
express the humanity and the divinity in the same 
relation and in the same time regarding the person 
of Christ; that is, that both predicates mutually 
exclude each other.’ God in this school is so thought 
of that He must cease to be God in so far as He 
becomes man. We need to revise the conception of 
God assumed so that the self-limitation necessarily 
involved in incarnation shall not be a depotentiation, 

1 Rechtfertigung und Verséhnung, iii. pp. 886-88. 


DOGMATIC FORMULATION 149 


but a self-fulfilment. The conception of kenosis we 
shall use in our constructive theology, and _ shall 
conceive the nature and purpose of God with reference 
to it: it is the use of the conception in the kenotic 
theories alone which is here condemned. 

(c) The theories do prove that, starting from the 
ecclesiastical dogma, it is impossible to reach and 
to hold the historical reality of Jesus without specula- 
tions which can appear intelligible and credible only 
to their authors. They serve to expose the dogma in 
all its contradictions, and so challenge and justify 
an attempt to safeguard the interests of Christian 
faith in regard to the person of Christ by means of 
other categories of thought, and other methods of 
presentation. 


CHAPTER V 


THE DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT REGARDING 
THE WORK OF CHRIST 


CLosELy related as the person and work of Christ 
are, the treatment of the two subjects in the Christian 
Church involves their separation. 

(i) That a soteriological interest was involved in 
the Christological development must be recognised. 
The apprehension of salvation affected the conception 
of the Saviour. If what man needed was deliverance 
from corruption, or mortality, consequent on sin, a 
deification of his nature, then the Incarnation must 
be regarded as a deification of human nature typical 
and creative for the race; the leaven of divinity must 
be introduced into the lump of humanity so that the 
whole might be leavened. The Atonement here is a 
mysterious transformation of human nature in the 
race consequent on such transformation by the pres- 
ence of God Hin‘self in the representative person of 
the race. What was done in Adam for man’s destruc- 
tion was undone in Christ for man’s salvation. God 
became man, that man might become God, incor- 
ruptible, immortal. It is this conception of salvation 
which is the doctrinal basis of sacramentarianism. 
The sacrament of the Eucharist is the physical channel 
by which this transformation is communicated. This 
whole mode of thought and life is so alien to the spirit 
of the writer, that this conception of salvation need 
not for the present purpose be pursued any further. 

(11) In the doctrinal development to be traced in 
these pages it is the death of Christ which is the central 
interest. What is the significance and value of His 
sacrifice for the salvation of men? Here there 


is a restriction of the scope of the work of Christ, 
150 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 151 


Although He was fulfilling His calling in His earthly 
ministry, that for the most part falls out of account. 
His life, His teaching, His example, His companion- 
ship, His dealing with sinful, sorrowing, and dying 
men to impart God’s grace, are ignored, and great is 
the loss; for the Cross becomes an abstraction about 
which there can be a great deal of speculation divorced 
from reality, unless the concrete context of this earthly 
ministry is carried forward into the conception of the 
Crucified. No theory of the Atonement can be true 
and right which is not consistent with the spirit and 
purpose of Him who atones, as revealed to us in the 
earthly life. Let this be accepted at the outset as a 
criticism applicable to this doctrinal development as 
a whole. 

(iii) The doctrine of the Atonement thus restricted 
has had many vicissitudes in the course of its develop- 
ment. Often it has been allowed to fall into the 
background of the life and thought of the Church. 
Often has a religious revival brought it again to the 
central position. (a) It does not owe so much to 
the collective judgment of the Church, as to individual 
experience and interpretation. Its history is not 
associated with universal councils, but with great 
personalities. All doctrine does and must reflect the 
life and thought of the time and the place; but no 
doctrine has been more sensitive to this influence, and 
in this doctrine we can see as in a mirror what beliefs 
and habits were dominant. Instances of this tendency 
will recur again and again in the course of the follow- 
ing discussion. (6) If the doctrinal development has 
been thus affected by temporal and local conditions, 
may we not be compelled to acknowledge a like 
influence on the presentation of the data for the 
doctrine in the New Testament? We cannot think 
and feel about sacrifice as the godly in Israel did. We 
cannot put ourselves again into Paul’s attitude as a 
Pharisee to the Law, an attitude which the Christian 
apostle had not altogether abandoned. On the other 
hand, we should fall into serious error if we supposed 
that there was nothing permanent nor universal in 


152 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


the doctrine. The persistency with which men have 
returned to the interpretation of it because of the 
constancy of its challenge to the religious conscious- 
ness and moral conscience proves that it does corre- 
spond with something that endures in the inner life 
of man, that it does answer a question man must 
ask, and meet a need he cannot set aside. That 
among those who have wrestled with this truth have 
been some of the greatest personalities in the Christian 
Church shows that it has a hold on what is worthiest 
in the soul of man. (c) In no other doctrine is there 
so intimate a relation, and so direct an influence, of 
the religious consciousness and the moral conscience, 
and, what till we consider it closely seems most in- 
explicable, nowhere does the religious consciousness 
come into more acute conflict with the moral con- 
science than with regard to this doctrine. Religion 
seems to demand what morality is not prepared to 
concede. Two considerations can be offered in ex- 
planation of this contradiction. Religion as dealing 
with eternal reality is more conservative than morality 
which deals with the temporal relations of. men in 
human society. Not only must morality be more 
immediately responsive to change of the total condi- 
tions of life than religion is forced to be, but man has 
a sense of liberty in this moral conscience, whereas in 
his religious consciousness he has rather the sense of 
dependence. It seems much less reasonable and 
righteous that man’s thoughts about God should 
change than that he should modify his view as to what 
is his duty to his fellow-men. 

(iv) These considerations show the spirit in which, 
and the purpose for which, we must address ourselves 
to a study of the history of the doctrine.1 However 
uncongenial and even repugnant to us some of the 
theories may appear to be, we must not forget that 
they met a present need, that through them as 


1 The following books among others may be specially mentioned: Franks’ 
A History of the Doctrine of the Work of Christ, 2 vols.; Mozley’s The Doc- 
trine of the Atonement; Bruce’s The Humiliation of Christ; Denney’s The 
Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT | 153 


adapted to the thought and life of the time the grace 
of God did bring comfort and succour to the hearts of 
men. We must try to understand them, and even 
recognise their worth for their immediate purpose. 
This, however, does not involve that we are to make 
the attempt to take up these theories into our con- 
structive theology, forcing our minds to assimilate 
what must remain for us alien, and even, it may be, 
offensive. We must try to discover what fact about 
man, or what truth about God, they may contain, 
however imperfectly expressed, so that we may take 
due account of the one or the other in making a state- 
ment as comprehensive as possible. 

(1) We may begin with that theory which is most 
remote from our thinking to-day, viz. that the death 
of Christ was a ransom paid by God to the devil. 

(1) We have the conception of redemption in the 
New Testament as deliverance from sin and law, death 
and doom; but the metaphor of the ransom is not 
there developed into a theory. This theory has, how- 
ever, its points of contact with the New Testament in 
regard to the place of angelology and demonology in 
the primitive Christian beliefs. In dealing with Paul’s 
teaching in a previous chapter, mention was merely 
made of Paul’s reference to the relation of the death 
of Christ to the rule of angels, good and bad. The 
passage may here be recalled. ‘ Having put off from 
Himself the principalities and the powers, He made a 
show of them openly, triumphing over them in it’ 
(Col. 1. 15). ‘ Till recently,’ says Peake,! ‘ the prin- 
cipalities and powers have been explained as hostile 
demoniacal spirits, and this view is held by Meyer, 
Ellicott, Lightfoot, Oltramare, and Weiss.’ As the 
preceding verse refers, however, to the abolition of the 
law for Christian believers, Peake considers that the 
context requires us to think here of the angels by 
whose mediation, according to Jewish belief, the law 
was given. ‘ This law that has been abolished was 
given by angels, its abolition implies their degrada- 
tion.’ This interpretation seems forced, and is justi- 

* The Expositor’s Greek Testament, ii. pp. 528-30. | 


154 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


fied only on the ground of the continuity of Paul’s 
argument. But Paul was not always a strictly logical 
thinker, and having shown what the death of Christ 
meant to the Jew he may have turned abruptly to 
show what it meant to the Gentile. Be the inter- 
pretation what it may, it is certain that Gentile 
readers would regard the passage as teaching Christ’s 
triumph over demons. 

(u) This vivid and intense belief in demons, their 
power to inflict physical as well as moral and religious 
injury on man, was a survival in the Church of pagan- 
ism, of the animism which is a very early form of 
religious belief. It introduced a very real dread of 
untold mischief which might befall any man. This 
belief was modified by the Christian faith in two 
respects. Just as polytheism yielded to monotheism, 
so the multitude of demons, while their existence was 
not denied, were concentrated as regards malevolent 
purpose and power in one, their ruler, Satan, the devil, 
who, where monotheism did not assert itself, was 
almost a counter-god. So also it was not by natural 
necessity that men were subject to this dominion of 
the devil; as a result of Adam’s fall mankind had 
subjected itself to that dominion voluntarily, but 
was not able by its own efforts to cast off that yoke. 
It is not so surprising as it at first appears to us 
that an attempt should be made to include in the 
Christian salvation deliverance from the devil’s dom- 
inion, and the use of the word ransom suggested the 

way in which the connection was made. 
(il) This theory is anticipated in Marcion’s state- 
ment that the death of Christ was ‘ the price by which 
the God of love purchased men from the creator of the 
world,’ for his demiurge shows a marked likeness to 
the devil of orthodox theology. It is not probable 
that Irenaeus had the devil m view when he speaks 
of God as redeeming men, not by force, but by per- 
suasion. Origen was the first Christian theologian 
who affirmed distinctly that the death of Christ was 
a ransom paid to the devil for the souls of men brought 
under his dominion by sin, that the devil could not 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 155 


keep the price he had received because of Christ’s 
perfect purity, and that Christ both for Himself and 
ali who follow Him won the victory over the devil. 
He does not, however, suggest any deliberate decep- 

tion on the part of God. It was Gregory of Nyssa 
(who died about a.p. 394) who fully developed this 
doctrine. As man had freely surrendered himself to 
Satan, God could not deliver by force, but must pay 
a price. Satan coveted the miraculous power of 
Christ and wanted to get possession of it. That the 
power was divine had to be concealed by the flesh. 
‘ Goodness is displayed in God’s will to save, justice 
in the giving of a guid pro quo, wisdom in devising that 
Satan might take what he could not retain.’ ‘ Satan 
was taken as a greedy fish by the hook concealed in 
the bait.’ ‘ Was not guile used in the Incarnation ? 
Yes, but this is a mark of wisdom, justice, and good- 
ness--justice in that the devil is rewarded after his 
desert; wisdom in that by this retribution a better 
thing is brought about; goodness in that the guile 
ends in human salvation.’! Gregory of Nazianzum 
does regard the death of Christ as a victory over Satan 
and death, in which Satan was deceived, yet he will 
not admit that a ransom was paid to Satan, since Satan 
had no claim for compensation, as his power was 
usurped. Ambrose held the theory of a ransom paid 
to the devil, including a fraud practised upon him ; 

but he also represents Christ’s death as the payment 
of a debt due to the devil, and acknowledged by God. 
Augustine recognised the devil’s rights, but did not 
teach any ‘ pious fraud’ on him. Anselm decisively 
rejected this theory. But Bernard maintained that 
although the right of Satan over mankind is not based 
on any obligation to him, yet this bondage, however 
irregularly secured, is righteously permitted by God 
as a just retribution for sin. He is the executor of 
the divine justice, and Christ makes deliverance from 
his control harmonise with the justice of God. Peter 
the Lombard states the theory in a most offensive 
form. ‘ What did the Redeemer to our captor? He 


+ Franks, op. cit., 1. p. 76. 


156 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


extended to him His cross as a mouse-trap: He set 
there as a bait His blood.’ } 

(iv) However offensive such a theory may appear to 
us, we should not be content with condemning it, we 
should ask ourselves rather: How did men find any 
satisfaction in it? It must be conceded that the 
moral ideas involved are to us repugnant; that God 
should be under obligation to make a bargain with 
the devil for the recovery of man from his dominion, 
and that nevertheless He was wise, righteous, and 
good in cheating the devil of his due, is a combination 
of ideas which our conscience must condemn as im- 
moral. What gave the theory its hold was that the 
fear of the devil’s dominion was a real fear, and that 
in this theory there seemed to be assured to men a 
real deliverance. This has marked all theories of 
the Atonement, that they have represented the death 
of Christ as saving from what was there and then 
deemed one of man’s greatest evils. If we attempt 
to find some counterpart for this theory in the con- 
structive theology at which we aim, it would seem to 
be this, that in Christ we are brought into such a 
relation to God that for us in the love of God there is 
an assurance that nothing works for our hurt, and 
all works together for our good. 

(2) Having dealt with the patristic view of salvation 
in which the emphasis was put on the Incarnation 
rather than the Atonement of the Cross, and having 
passed judgment on the theory of the death as a 
ransom paid to the devil, we need not dwell on the 
varied views of the Fathers, in which many different 
tendencies appear but there is no systematic treat- 
ment of the subject. We may pass at once to a clear- 
cut theory in Anselm’s answer to the question Cur 
Deus Homo ? the title of his treatise. 

(i) He feels it incumbent to answer that question 
in vindication both of the wisdom and the power of 
God. He aims at showing that this was the only way 
in which mankind could be saved from the doom of 
sin. He sets aside the ‘ ransom to Satan’ theory on 


1 Franks, op. cit., i. p. 220. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT Lov 


the ground that Satan has no legal claim on God, 
as he is God’s creature even as man is. (a) The 
Atonement was necessary because of sin. Sin is 
nothing else than failing to render to God what is 
His due, for every creature owes to Him absolute 
obedience, and even the slightest disobedience would 
not be justified, were it to rescue the Universe from total 
destruction. Sin can therefore be atoned for only by 
something more valuable than the whole universe. 
(b) Though God cannot lose His honour, yet sin is a 
personal insult to God, and God’s honour must be 
vindicated, not simply by the future obedience of 
the transgressor, but by an adequate compensation 
for the injury done to God’s honour. (c) Man cannot 
render this compensation, and yet he cannot be 
excused on account of his inability, for that 1s due to 
his own fault, It is impossible that God should let 
His honour be affronted without vindicating it, since 
that would be permitting an incongruity in the 
government of the universe. This necessity is not 
imposed on God, but rises out of His own nature, 
since by a single sin a debt is incurred which the aha 
universe would be insufficient to meet. (d) God alone 
can make the satisfaction, but it must be made by 
man, since it was he who incurred the debt. Therefore 
the case can be met only by a God-man. Thus the 
Word became flesh. (e) He is impeccable, and death 
is only properly due to sin as its consequence. He 
being sinless was not compelled to die. His death 
was due to His unswerving fidelity to God. It was 
thus a supreme act of honour to God, which out- 
weighed the whole sin of the race. (f) But 1t would 
be unjust of God to let this act go unrewarded. He 
could give nothing to Christ, since He as God possessed 
everything. So Christ transferred His merit to us, 
and thus we receive salvation. Christ pays our debt 
in satisfying God’s honour by dying, and transfers 
to us the merit which falls to Him for dying volun- 
tarily. 

(1) This theory has such importance in the history 
of the doctrine, that it claims closer examination. 


158 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(a) Although there is in Anselm a deep sense of 
the enormity of sin—Denney insists that this is the 
final merit of his theory—yet his view of it is un- 
satisfactory. It is the dishonouring of the Creator 
by the disobedience of the creature. It is not related 
either to an eternal law of righteousness or to the 
eternally perfect character and purpose of God. It 
is as a moral agent in a moral community with God 
that man should be regarded to estimate his sin 
adequately, and not merely as a creature related to 
the Creator. It is true that the other view is not 
altogether absent. God must vindicate His honour, 
since Deum non deceit aliquid in suo regno mordinatum 
demitiere. Had this subordinate thought been made 
primary there would have resulted a more satisfactory 
theory. 

(b) While making sin a robbery of God’s honour, 
Anselm spoils his argument by admitting that God 
cannot be robbed of His honour. Sin is an affront 
to God, who cannot thus be affronted. It might be 
argued that men had the intention to affront, although 
that intention could not take effect. To this the reply 
might be given that their sin should be measured 
by the finitude of man, and not the infinitude of God. 
Anselm’s admission does lessen the reality of the sin, 
and makes less real the need of expiation, although 
he does not himself recognise this consequence. 

(c) If sin is only a personal affront to God it is 
difficult to see why God might not remit the penalty 
of His choice,'as a matter that concerned only His 
own honour. God demands an atonement to vindi- 
cate His personal honour, which after all has suffered 
no affront. Denney! is not altogether successful in his 
defence of Anselm in regard to this matter. * It may 
be that it carries with it some flavour of ideas of per- 
sonal rank and dignity, such as lay at the root of the 
feudal system. But this is certainly not the main 
thing, and it is absurd to say that Anselm, or those 
to whom his thoughts appealed, conceived of God as 
a feudal baron, and not as the Father of our Lord 

1 The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 67. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 159 


Jesus Christ.’ But what is there in Anselm’s argu- 
ment turning our minds from the feudal baron to 
the Father ? 

(d) If this view is replaced by Anselrn’s assertion 
that the vindication of God’s honour is a necessity of 
His nature, then atonement is represented as made 
for God’s sake rather than man’s, and does not appear 
as an act of free grace or love. 

(ec) Anselm’s view of the consequence of sin as an 
affront to God’s honour made satisfaction or punish- 
ment necessary. The difference between these is thus 
expressed by Denney: ‘In the case of satisfaction the 
offender makes good his offence, in the case of punish- 
ment it is made good upon him by the act of the 
offended.’ ‘ According to Anselm it is inconceivable 
that God’s purpose in creating man should be finally 
frustrated in this fashion; and as this is an assump- 
tion of reason, it is rationally necessary that not the 
easy way of punishment, but the hard way of satis- 
faction, should be followed in dealing with human sin.’ ! 
Man could offer no satisfaction, but Christ as the 
God-man could. The next step in the argument 
should surely be that Christ owed it to God and man 
to offer the satisfaction He alone could offer. But 
Anselm does not so reason. ‘The God-man must 
do something for the honour of God to which He is 
not obliged upon other grounds.’ ? ‘ He is not obliged 
to die—for death is the wages of sin, and He has not 
sinned—and hence His death, the surrender of His 
infinitely precious life, may be offered to God by way 
of satisfaction.’* This gift is entitled to a reward. 
As a work of supererogation it had a merit which 
ought to be recognised. The flaw in this argument is 
the denial that God could claim Christ’s death, and 
Christ owed His death to God, since the claim of God 
on man and the debt of man to God are absolute. 
What God’s glory might require, it was Christ’s duty 
to render. 

(f) Consequently, the next step in the argument is 
invalid. As justice does not require that any reward 

1 Op. cit., p, 69. i Fh’, B P. 72. 


160 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


be given to Christ for being more obedient to God than 
was necessary, Christ cannot claim our salvation as 
a reward due to Him. 

(g) Suppose, however, the reward was earned, in 
transferring His merits to us He makes over to us a 
boon of which He has no need, for which He has no 
other use. The relation is thus altogether external. 
Anselm knows nothing of Paul’s experience of that 
mystical union with Christ, in which Christ's death 
and resurrection are reproduced i in the believer’s death 
unto sin, and becoming alive unto God. Christ does 
not by the self- identification of His love assume our 
sins, and His merits are quite arbitrarily and exter- 
nally transferred to us. We are moving here among 
the contemporary ideas of honour, insult, satisfaction, 
works of supererogation, merit, and not amid moral 
and religious experiences. 

(iii) Denney shows a very high appreciation of 
Anselm in three respects: (a) the serious view he 
takes of sin, (b) his recognition that the death of Christ 
meets a divine demand and not merely a human need, 
and (c) the connection he insists on between forgive- 
ness and the redemptive work of Christ: and these 
merits may be admitted. Denney, however, recognises 
four defects. (a) ‘Anselm gives no prominence to 
the love of God as the source of the satisfaction for 
sin, or to the appeal which that love makes to the 
heart of sinful men.’ (6) ‘ The death of Christ is 
treated merely as a thing, a quantum of some kind.’ 
‘Ex hypothesi (as a work of supererogation, above God’s 
claim and man’s duty) it is outside of the world of 
moral obligation, and is therefore not susceptible of 
moral construction.’ (c) °No real connection is 
established by Anselm between the death of Christ 
and the sin of the world, which sin, nevertheless, 
can only be remitted on the ground of that death. 
This is due to the entire arbitrariness of the idea of 
satisfaction. It seems fairly certain that the word 
satisfactto—though commonly enough applied, in con- 
nection with the penitential system of the Church, to 
the acts or sacrifices by which the Christian who had 





DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 161 


fallen into sin made good his fault, and was reconciled 
to God and His people—was never before Anselm 
expressly applied to the work of Christ.’ ‘ Anselm, 
by defining Christ’s death merely as an alternative 
to the punishment of sin (necesse est ut omne peccatum 
satisfactio aut poena sequatur), and by refusing to 
define it in relation to His life, as something which 
~ He owed to God, and which therefore entered into 
His vocation and could be morally understood, has 
practically made it meaningless.’ (d) ‘ Anselm gives 
no real account of the way in which the work of Christ 
comes to benefit men. Christ is left standing, so to 
speak, with the merit of His death in His hand, and 
looking round to see what He can do with it. What 
is more suitable and becoming (convenientius) than 
that He should give it to those who in virtue of the 
Incarnation are His kindred? Nothing could be less 
like than this to all we know about how the work of 
Christ takes effect in human lives.’! Notwithstanding 
all these defects Anselm’s essay has a very great 
historical significance as the first attempt at a system- 
atic statement of the reason for and the meaning of 
the death of Christ as an atonement for sin, in which 
incarnation is subordinated to atonement. 

(3) Anselm’s is an objective doctrine of the Atone- 
ment; it is concerned with the death of Christ in 
relation to God as meeting the divine demand for 
satisfaction for His honour affronted by man’s sin. 
Abialard’s is a subjective doctrine ; it exhibits the death 
of Christ as it affects man, in the influence it exerts 
over man. This is commonly spoken of as the moral 
view, a description that does injustice to other views 
which are no less concerned with morality, and does not 
bring out what distinguishes this view from others. A 
more accurate phrase would be the moral influence view. 

(i) Abalard very decisively rejects the ransom to 
Satan theory, but also the view that God is appeased 
by the death of His Son. (a) For him the work of 
Christ, including the suffering and death, is a mani- 
festation of the divine love to the unworthy which is 

1 Op. cit., pp. 75-7. 
L 


162 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


adapted to kindle gratitude in their hearts, and to 
win them back to obedience to God. It is this aspect 
or interpretation of the office of Christ which most 
impresses him. Of this redeeming work of Christ 
only the elect are the objects, only in regard to them 
God’s disposition need not be changed, there is no 
wrath to be assuaged, but it is their disposition to God 
which needs to be changed: and Christ by giving the 
highest proof of love wins their trust in and surrender 
to God. (b) This statement, however, leaves the 
question unanswered: Why was the love shown in 
just this way? A sacrifice can be justified only if 
its necessity can be proved. ‘ The death of Christ,’ 
says Denney, ‘can only be regarded as a demonstration 
of love to sinners, if it can be defined or interpreted 
as having some necessary relation to their sins.’ 
Abdlard in some of his utterances shows that he had 
a sense of the insufficiency of his view. ‘ Hence it is 
not astonishing to find Abdlard saying that ours was 
the guilt for which He had to die, and that we com- 
mitted the sin whose penalty He endured: though 
these are manifestly forms of speech which belong 
to another order of thought than that which is con- 
scious and predominant in him. So also, while he 
gives predominance to the love of Christ, as the 
stimulus of love in man, he admits that it never does 
everything in sinners that they need to have done; 
their justification or righteousness is always imperfect, 
and what is wanting in this respect has to be supple- 
mented by the righteousness of Christ, and especially 
by His intercession for them.’! By the introduction 
of this new point of view, the theory loses its con- 
sistency. (c) God forgives us in Christ’s deed of dying 
for us in so far as He reckons to us the merit of Christ, 
because Christ stands before God as the head of 
humanity. God is satisfied by the obedience of Christ 
and lets the merit of the perfect righteousness of Christ 
fall to our advantage. Christ keeps on working on 
our behalf, for His constant intercession for us is 
reckoned to us as merit. This merit lies not in a 
1 Op. cit., pp. 79-81. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 163 


number of acts, but in the fullness of love dwelling in 
Christ. The love of Christ calls forth our love, and 
in loving Christ a man has forgiveness of sin granted 
to him—nay, the forgiveness is in the interchange of 
love. This theory has a wavering outline, as Abalard 
was forced to recognise aspects of truth beyond his 
dominant idea. 

(ii) The defect of the view is that Abalard fails to 
show the necessity of the death of Christ ; and if this 
is not shown, the death ceases to be an evidence of 
love to the uttermost, as love shows itself not in 
superfluous but in inevitable sacrifice. There is some- 
thing spectacular and not real in an exhibition of 
love in sacrifice for which no moral necessity can -be 
shown. ‘To have full moral effect the sacrifice must 
be shown to have full moral content, to be an absolute 
moral necessity. The most worthy and mighty love 
morally for the sinful is the love which so suffers for 
the sin as to show the greatness of the sin forgiven 
as well as the greatness of the love forgiving. A 
sinner cannot be saved from guilt until he has fully 
discovered his guilt, as he does in the sacrifice of 
Christ only when in it is seen sin’s judgment as well 
as love’s gift. The merit of Abalard’s view, however, 
is that he recovered the New Testament conception of 
the living fellowship of the believer with Christ, and 
so recalled the forgotten apostolic thought of Christ’s 
perpetual intercession ; and this sense of the love of 
Christ led him to seek for that love not only in the 
death, but also in the earthly life. Inadequate as the 
theory is, the spirit in Him is evangelical as Anselm’s 
is not. Had Anselm sought the ultimate motive of 
the death of Christ in the love of God, and had Abalard 
sought the final purpose of the death of Christ in God’s 
judgment on, while forgiving, the sin of man, the 
defects of each would have been corrected, and a 
more adequate theory of the Atonement might have 
emerged. 

(4) Into the elaborate combination of almost all 
former points of view which we find in Thomas 
Aquinas we need not for our purpose enter; but 


164 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


mention may be made of an idea asserted by Duns 
Scotus. The value of the death of Christ does not 
lie in anything in its nature, but only in the divine 
acceptance. The divine will can estimate whatever 
is done or suffered just as it pleases. A thing is good 
because God loves it. Had God pleased, man might 
have been redeemed by acts of love done by Adam 
or an angel. Since Christ merits as Man and not as 
God, His merits are finite and cannot be reckoned as 
infinite, or taking the place of the infinite. For the 
extrinsic reason of the dignity of Christ, God accepts 
His merits as infinite. It is a merit of congruity, and 
not of condignity. God decides to consider the merits 
of Christ as full atonement, to accept them for more 
than their inherent value apart from this acceptance. 
This theory has been called the theory of acceptilation,! 
and has evidently no meaning, but is the bankruptcy 
of thought on the subject. 

(5) Anselm regarded punishment and satisfaction 
as alternatives: Christ did not endure punishment 
instead of us, but He rendered satisfaction on our 
behalf. The idea of punishment endured was not 
absent from Mediaeval thought, and we find it in 
Abalard, however inconsistently with his dominant 
conception. In the theology of the Reformation the 
conception of substitutionary penalty assumes a 
prominence it had not had before. The relation 
between Christ and the believer becomes more in- 
timate and immediate. Instead of Christ rendering a 
satisfaction to God and transferring His merits to us, 
there is a personal exchange. Christ takes our sins, 
and suffers their penalty ; we take His righteousness, 
and are reckoned righteous. 

(i) ‘ Luther, introducing into the traditional struc- 
ture his new doctrine of justification by faith, intro- 
duces it not as another block to be built in with the 
rest, but rather as a solvent, before which some 
elements of the older theology disappear as alien 
philosophical accretions not belonging to Christian- 


2 ¢ Acceptilation signifies in Roman law the dissolution of an obligation by 
mere words.’ Franks, op. cit., ii. p. 25. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 165 


ity, while those that remain begin to be transmuted 
each into the other, and all into the doctrine of 
justification by faith.’! (a) Whatever difficulty the 
statement of the doctrine of the Atonement by the 
Reformers may now present to us, we should not 
ignore the fact that all the changes of doctrine 
resulted from a fresh apprehension of the personal 
relation of the believer to Christ, a relation of mutual 
identification. ‘ The believer is so cemented to Christ,’ 
says Luther, ‘ that he can say, ‘‘ I am Christ—that is, 
His righteousness, victory, life are mine”; and in 
turn Christ can say, ‘‘ I am that sinner because he 
cleaves to me, and I to him,” for we are joined by 
faith as members of His body, of His flesh and bones ’ 
(Ad Eph., v. 80). The foundation of all the blessings 
the believer receives through faith is the atoning work 
of Christ, and not any merit of his own works. In 
virtue of his union with the Righteous One, his faith 
is imputed unto him for righteousness. This is the 
earlier and simpler statement; it was afterwards 
modified as follows: the righteousness of Christ is 
imputed to him, and God deals with him as if he 
had gained this righteousness for himself. Still later 
Lutheran theology made a further distinction be- 
tween Christ’s passive righteousness in enduring the 
penalty of sin, and His active righteousness in fulfilling 
the requirements of the law; and both are imputed 
to the believer. 

(b) In dealing with the Atonement, Luther often 
represents Christ as conquering sin, and death, and 
Satan. He strongly asserts Christ’s vicarious endur- 
ance of the curse of the law. ‘In His innocent, tender 
heart He was obliged to taste for us eternal death 
and damnation, and, in short, to suffer everything 
that a condemned sinner has merited and must suffer 
for ever. ‘‘Sensit poenam infernalem.’’ Christ took 
all my sins upon Him, and for them died upon the 
Cross; therefore it behoved that He should become 
a transgressor, and, as Isaiah the prophet saith, “ be 
reckoned and accursed among transgressors and tres- 

1 Franks, History of the Doctrine of the Work of Christ, i. p. 887-88. 


166 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


99°97 


passers. ‘Christ 1s innocent as concerning His 
own person, and, therefore, He ought not to have 
been hanged on a tree. ... But Christ sustained 
the person of a sinner and a thief, not of one but of 
all sinners and thieves’ (Ad Gal., ili. 18). He bears 
our penalty, and in bearing it He secures a righteous- 
ness which accords with the divine righteousness. 

(c) “ Luther,’ says Denney, ‘ had no enthusiasm for 
the term’ satisfaction. ‘ The idea of satisfaction was 
bound up with the penitential system of the Mediaeval 
Church, which more than anything else roused the 
indignation of Luther as concealing, disguising, and 
corrupting the Gospel.’ ? In later Protestant theology 
‘the satisfaction is not the Anselmic one, which has 
no relation to punishment, nor that of the penitential 
system, which is only quasi-penal, but that of Roman 
law, which is identical with punishment. ... Mel- 
anchthon is as explicit as words can be: ‘‘ Deus 
justitiae suae puniendo satisfecit; justitia servatur 
in recipienda poena.”’3 The righteousness of God 
takes the place of His honour, and sin is conceived 
not as an affront to that honour, but as disobedience 
to the law of God, which expresses that righteousness. 
The defect of this view of satisfaction is that, as Denney 
points out, ‘it left no significance for salvation to 
anything in Jesus except His death.’ As has already 
been indicated, the later theology found a signifi- 
cance and value for His active as well as His passive 
obedience. 

(dq) This Christ who thus suffers for us and offers 
Himself to us as our righteousness is given us by 
God, who is well pleased with all Christ says and 
does for us. ‘Grace,’ says Denney, ‘ceased to be a 
thing or quantum which could be “ infused’’ in man, 
or administered in appropriate quantities or qualities — 
through the sacraments; it became the attitude 
of God to sinners as exhibited in Christ.?4 Luther 
puts this truth with his usual vehemence. ‘ God’s 


* Quoted by Fisher, op. cit., p. 276. 
* The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, pp. 92-3. 
SP AOA; tu Bao 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 167 


good pleasure and His whole heart thou seest in 
Christ, in all His words and works. . . . Thinkest thou 
not that, if a human heart truly felt that good pleasure 
which God has in Christ when He thus saves us, it 
would for very joy burst into a hundred thousand 
pieces ? For then it would see into the abyss of the 
fatherly heart, yea into the fathomless and eternal 
goodness and love of God, which He feels towards us 
and has felt from eternity.’! It is clear from these 
words that for Luther Christ expresses and does not 
procure the love of God for sinful men. | 

(e) Luther’s doctrine affirms so complete an identi- 
fication by Christ of Himself with sinful mankind, 
that He sorrows and suffers for sin as if He Himself 
had been a sinner; and so complete an identification 
of the sinner by faith with Christ, that he has Christ’s 
righteousness as accepted by God in Him, and is 
changed to the likeness of the Son. He does dis- 
tinguish, as does Paul, between the absolute religious 
assurance and the relative moral progress. The 
believer ‘has begun to be justified and healed,’ so 
that what is left of sin ‘ by reason of Christ’ is not 
imputed to him (Ad Gal., 1. 17)." If there is not an 
external, arbitrary substitution of Christ for us, Christ 
substitutes Himself for us in the endurance of the 
penalty of sin because in His love He has identified 
Himself with us as sinners. His salvation avails for 
us not by our merely believing that He is our sub- 
stitute, but by our identifying ourselves so with Him 
that He becomes in us the motive and the power 
of a new life. Luther must not be held responsible 
for the later Lutheran scholasticism. Recklessly as 
he sometimes expressed himself, laying himself open 
to misunderstanding, he did recover the Pauline ex- 
perience of the grace of God in Christ. 

(11) Calvin is in substantial agreement with Luther. 
(a) We are saved by the imputation to us of Christ’s 
righteousness, not on the ground of anything, not 


* Festpostill, Von der Taufe Christi, quoted by Fisher, History of Christian 
Doctrine. 


* Quoted by Fisher, op. cit., p. 274. 


168 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


even of faith in ourselves. While faith includes in 
it the ecertitudo salutis, Calvin allows for the imper- 
fection of faith, for the struggle with remaining sin, 
and the consequent occasional or partial dulling of 
the believer’s confidence. While justification as the 
forgiveness of sin is distinguished, it is never separated 
from sanctification or the process of becoming holy. 
Christ has satisfied for our sins in sustaining the 
punishment. He has appeased God by His obedience, 
not only in His death, but also in His life. What 
gives value to His death is His voluntary submission. 
‘He makes much,’ says Denney, ‘ of the Descensus ad 
inferos, “that invisible and incomprehensible judg- 
ment which He underwent at the bar if God; that 
we might know that not only was the body of Christ 
given up as the price of our redemption, but that there 
was another greater and more excellent price—namely, 
that He endured in His soul the dreadful torments 
of a condemned and lost man” (Calvin, Institutes, 11. 
xvi. 10).’1 This statement must, however, be qualified 
by this other: ‘ We do not indeed insinuate that God 
was either ever opposed to or angry with Him. For 
how could He be angry with His beloved Son, in whom 
His mind rested ? or how could Christ, by His inter- 
cession, propitiate for others a Father whom He had 
as an enemy to Himself? This we say, that He 
sustained the gravity of divine severity ; since, being 
stricken and afflicted by the hand of God, He ex- 
er eens all the signs of an angry and punishing 
pdx? 

(5) There are two peculiar opinions worth mention- 
ing. First, while he regards the main purpose of the 
Incarnation to be redemptive, yet he does not regard 
this as the only possible reason. God so far tran- 
scends and excels man that even if he had remained 
sinless he would have needed a Mediator in order to 
attain to union with God. Secondly, in one place he 
seems to accept Duns Scotus’ view: ‘The merit of 


' Denney, op. cit., p. 49. 
2 Calvin, Jnst., 1. xvi. 11. (Juoted in Bruce’s The Humiliation of Christ, 
pp. 334-35. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 169 


Christ by which we are saved depends merely on 
the good pleasure of God which appointed the method 
of salvation for us’ (In., I. xviii. 1). The theory of 
acceptilatio would, however, be inconsistent with what 
he says about the death of Christ, and what he means 
here to assert is probably the freedom of God’s grace 
in redemption. God was under no necessity to pro- 
vide salvation: but this salvation He provided had 
an intrinsic value. ‘In a certain ineffable manner, 
at the same time as He loved us He was nevertheless 
angry with us until He was reconciled in Christ’ 
(II. xvi. 2). 

(11) We need not consider the vulgarisation of this 
doctrine in later evangelical theology—such as the 
attempt to prove a qualitative and a quantitative 
equivalence of the sufferings of Christ and those which 
sinners would have had to endure—that they were the 
same in amount as well as in kind, and that the tem- 
poral agony of an infinite person is equal to the eternal 
torments of finite persons. The position of the Re- 
formers was an advance on the Mediaeval one. The 
conceptions of righteousness, moral law, and order are 
more adequate than those of satisfaction and merit. | 
But the conception of God has not been entirely 
transformed by the revelation of -His love and grace 
in Jesus Christ. A dualism remains between His 
righteousness and His love and grace which the 
theory of the Atonement does not resolve. The 
conception of a transference of guilt and penalty 
is neither sound law nor good morality. The sinless 
cannot be held guilty, or punished instead of the 
sinful, although love in self-sacrifice may share the 
sufferings which are the results of sin. The categories 
of the law courts, and human government generally, 
are quite inadequate to express the moral and religious 
relation of man to God. The Reformers did appre- 
hend moral and religious reality, but inadequately 
expressed what they apprehended; and we must 
now try to find a more adequate expression of that 
same reality. The subsequent developments both in 
the Lutheran and in the Reformed Churches show 


170 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


that, great as Luther and Calvin were, they had not 
given a final expression to Protestant theology. 
Many of the controversies have only a_ historical 
interest, and no direct bearing on the problems of 
the constructive theology of the day, and we may at 
once pass to Arminianism and the theory of the 
Atonement it offers us in the treatise of Grotius. 

(6) Arminianism was a revolt against Calvinism. 
(1) Its creed was set forth in the Remonstrance of 1610 
in five articles.! ‘ The first asserts conditional election, 
or election dependent on the foreknowledge of faith. 
The second asserts universal atonement, in the sense 
that it is intended, although it is not actually efficient 
for all. The third affirms the inability of man to 
exercise saving faith or to accomplish anything really 
good without regeneration through the Holy Spirit. 
The fourth declares that although grace at every 
step of the spiritual life is indispensable, it 1s yet not 
irresistible. The fifth pronounces the perseverance 
of all believers doubtful. Later, the Arminians went 
farther on this last point, maintaining that believers 
may fall from grace finally.’ Grotius, in defending 
the orthodox doctrine against Faustus Socinus in his 
treatise Defence of the Catholic Faith concerning the 
Satisfaction of Christ against Faustus Socinus of Siena, 
1617, formulated a new theory which is generally 
known as the governmental or rectoral theory. 

(ii) For the assumption of Anselm that man is 
related to God as debtor to creditor he substitutes the 
conception of the relation of the subject to the Ruler 
(Rector). As the end of punishment in the State is 
the preservation of order and deterrence from future 
transgressions, a penalty may be remitted if some 
other means of gaining the same end can be found. 
The death of Christ serves this end as being a ‘ penal 
example.’ It shows impressively what sin deserves ; 
what its punishment, if inflicted, would be; for it 
reveals the Lawgiver’s hatred of sin. It is not the 
reality, but the symbol of punishment. Accordingly 
God may fix what other conditions are necessary for 

1 Fisher, op. cit., p. 338. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 171 


pardon. While the Scottist conception of the liberty 
of the divine will as regards inflicting or remitting the 
penalty of sin is affirmed, the term acceptilation is 
rejected on the ground that it cannot be said that 
God receives the endurance of suffering by Christ. 
The Calvinists considered that Grotius had surren- 
dered the doctrine, as he had failed to represent the 
divine wrath against sin as a necessity of the divine 
nature, and had reduced God’s treatment of sin as 
due to His goodness, regulated by His wisdom, with 
a view: to the happiness of His creatures. 

(11) The analogy of the relation of Ruler and subject 
is an inadequate basis for any doctrine dealing with 
the relation of God to man, even if less inadequate 
than that of creditor and debtor. We are not shown 
by Grotius what it was that Christ suffered as the 
equivalent of man’s punishment, nor wherein lay the 
virtue of His suffering. The theory is arbitrary and 
artificial, unrelated to the experience of Christ or of 
the believer. Nevertheless, it did mark an advance, 
as it ‘helped to remove the ban of individualism, and 
to revive the idea of the Kingdom of God by its 
emphasis on the idea of a common good.’ ! 

(7) Jonathan Edwards opposed to Arminianism the 
modified Calvinism known as the New England 
Theology. 

(i) He wrote a profound treatise on Satisfaction. 
His argument is as follows : There must be compensa- 
tion for sin—punishment or repentance, humiliation 
and sorrow proportionate to the guilt incurred. As 
man’s guilt is infinite, no repentance adequate is 
possible to man. But Christ does for man what he 
cannot do for himself. As Intercessor for man He 
must have perfect sympathy: He must identify 
Himself entirely with God and man. His sympathy 
was perfected by His death, for there He understood 
fully what guilt involves. He appreciated both God’s 
holy resentment and man’s criminality and misery. 
The substitution was in His heart, but this led to, 
and was completed in, the final act of self-sacrifice. 

1 Denney, op. cit., p. 113. 


172 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


By His voluntary submission to death Christ showed 
His absolute approval of the righteousness of the law 
as penal as well as preceptive. He gave the strongest 
possible proof of the justice of the divine administra- 
tion in assigning death to the sinner, by Himself, 
though sinless, sharing in that experience. 

(ii) The value of this essay lies in the endeavour to 
set forth those elements of Christ’s own experience, 
moral and religious, which give value to His sacrifice 
and make it significant.as atoning. While Edwards 
still insists that Jesus endured the penalty of sin, 
he is careful to set aside the thought that Jesus 
was in fact, or in His own consciousness, the object 
of God’s wrath. When this is conceded, the term 
penalty ceases to be appropriate. Edwards was thus 
preparing the way for an abandonment of the con- 
ception of the death of Christ as penal satisfaction. 
His importance in the doctrinal development has been 
well summed up by Franks:! ‘ Edwards’ discourse is 
no mere reproduction of the traditional Protestant 
theology. It contains the following germinal thoughts, 
all of which have resulted in important developments 
in modern theology :—(1) A perfect repentance on 
man’s part might have sufficed to satisfy for sin: of 
such a repentance sinful man was, however, incapable. 
(2) Christ’s sufferings in bearing the divine wrath 
and the burden of human sin are to be understood 
psychologically through His sympathy with and pity 
for men. It was not, however, possible for Him, as 
an infinitely holy person, to bear the very pains of 
hell to be endured by the damned. (8) Christ Himself 
was perfected by His sufferings, ‘‘the exercise of His 
obedience or holiness tending to increase the root of 
it in His nature.” ’ 

(8) No theologian wielded a greater influence on 
theology in the nineteenth century than Schleier- 
macher. 

(1) For him redemption consists in the deliverance 
of the consciousness of God in man from his lower 
consciousness, and its enthronement in the soul. Not 

1 Op. cit., ii. p. 189. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 173 


only was there the supremacy of the consciousness 
of God in Christ from the beginning, but through 
His personal influence in the historical channel of 
His Church He produces this redemption in others. 
Schleiermacher distinguishes this redemption from 
reconciliation thus: ‘ The Redeemer receives believers 
into the power of His consciousness of God, and this 
is His redemptive activity.’ ‘The Redeemer receives 
believers into the fellowship of His undisturbed 
beatitude, and this is His reconciling activity.’ ! 
Ritschl criticises Schleiermacher on the ground that 
it is contrary to the principles of the Reformation 
to make redemption primary and_ reconciliation 
secondary. But we cannot so rigidly determine the 
order in which the sense of power and the feeling of 
blessedness shall come in the Christian experience. 
Schleiermacher calls his view the mystical as con- 
trasted with the orthodox, which he described as 
‘magical,’ and the Socinian, which he spoke of as 
‘ empirical.’ 

(11) Bruce includes Schleiermacher’s view in what 
he calls ‘the theory of redemption by sample,’ and 
thus describes the tendency generally :— Common 
to all forms of this so-called mystical theory is the 
position, that what Christ did for men He did also 
for Himself, and that He did it for us by doing it 
for Himself, acting as the Head and representative 
of humanity before God.’ As modern instances of 
this tendency he mentions Menken and Irving, whose 
theory he regards as the same in principle with that 
taught by the Fathers. ‘ The Sanctifier makes the 
lump of humanity holy, by taking a portion of the 
corrupt mass tainted with the vice of original sin and 
subject to sinful bias, and by a desperate lifelong 
struggle sanctifying it, subduing all temptations to 
sin arising out of its evil proclivities, and at last 
consuming the body of death as a sin-offering on the 
Cross.’2 While the Fathers recognised the superi- 
ority of Christ’s human nature, Menken and Irving 
insisted on the similarity of Christ’s nature to man’s. 

1 Op. cit., ii. p. 283. 2 Op. cit., pp. 308-10. 


174 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


As we cannot to-day assume the doctrine of original 
sin and total depravity, we cannot accept the theory 
as it is stated. The reality of Christ’s moral and 
religious experience we must affirm, no less than the 
fulfilment of His own vocation, the perfecting of His 
own personality in life and death. But our sense of 
the difference between ourselves as imperfect and 
Him as perfect forbids the assertion that He did 
and needed to do for us, only what He did and needed 
to do for Himself. Himself He sanctified ; us He must 
not only sanctify, but also justify. While this theory 
emphasises an aspect of the work of Christ which 
should be recognised, and is recognised by Edwards, 
it does not give a complete account of Christ’s 
work. 

(9) To another element in Edwards’ statement the 
exposition of the doctrine of the Atonement by M*Leod 
Campbell attached itself. His treatise on The Nature 
of the Atonement, and its Relation to the Remission of 
Sins and Eternal Life, Denney reckons with Schleier- 
macher’s and Ritschl’s works as one of the three 
original contributions to the subject made in recent 
times. | 

(i) Of the alternatives insisted on by Jonathan 
Edwards as the necessary consequence of sin—punish- 
ment or adequate repentance—Campbell rejects the 
former, and considers that Atonement was effected 
by an adequate repentance in the consciousness of 
Christ. The ingredient of personal remorse was 
absent, but present were all the spiritual elements 
which Edwards finds in the experience of Christ. 
In this experience Christ made an expiatory con- 
fession of our sins, which was ‘a perfect Amen in 
humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.’ + 
Faith is our Amen to this condemnation in the soul 
of Christ. Christ enters fully into the mind of God 
respecting sin, into His condemnation of it, and into 
His love to the sinner. This was the equivalent 
repentance which Edwards makes the alternative of 
punishment. With this sanction of His judgment 

1 Op, cit., p. 136. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 175 


on sin, reproduced in its essential elements in the 
believer through His connection with Christ, God is 
satisfied. Campbell regards the death of Christ as 
necessary to the realisation by Him of God’s feeling 
and man’s need. Without ‘the perfect experience 
of the enmity of the carnal mind to God,’ an adequate 
confession of man’s sin ‘ could not have been offered 
to God in expiation of man’s sin, nor intercession have 
been made according to the extent of man’s need of 
forgiveness.’ 1 He endured, and it was necessary that 
He should endure, death in the sense of the wages of 
sin. ‘As our Lord alone truly tasted death, so to 
Him alone had death its perfect meaning as the wages 
of sin, for Him alone was there full entrance into the 
mind of God towards sin and perfect unity with that 
mind.’ ? As man is both capable of and lable to 
death, not only sin had to be dealt with, but ‘an 
existing law with its penalty of death, and that death 
as already incurred.’ Hence a response was necessary 
to ‘that expression of the divine mind which was 
contained in God’s making death the penalty of sin.’ 
Thus the death of Christ was necessary that He might 
in this respect also enter into the mind of God, and 
complete the expiatory confession which is the moral 
essence of the Atonement. 

(11) The development of the theory shows how in- 
evitable is the transition from the new presentation 
to what was essential to the older doctrines. What 
must be included in Christ’s expiatory confession to 
make it complete is His actual experience of death 
as the penalty of sin. An analysis of the conception 
of penitence which goes deep enough into moral and 
religious reality leads inevitably to the idea of penalty. 
Abdlard, as we have seen, starting from a different 
assumption, is led to recognise, if inconsistently, this 
element in Christ’s death. An objection to Campbell’s 
theory which must be reserved for fuller discussion 
in the next chapter is whether such terms as repent- 
ance and confession can be used any more appro- 
priately than the term penalty in regard to the 

1 P. 289. 2 P. 302. 


176 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


experience and consciousness of the Sinless and Holy, 
or should be used only of the sinful. Apart from the 
question of terms, this theory contributes an essential 
element to the doctrine. 

(10) Albrecht Ritschl in his monumental work 
Rechifertigung und Verséhnung (Justification and Re- 
conciliation) ! strikes out a new path. 

(i) He starts with the traditional doctrine of the 
work of Christ as fulfilling the offices of prophet, 
priest, and king, and insists on the need of modifying 
it in four respects :—(a) For the idea of office must be 
substituted the more ethical conception of vocation, 
in which the personality realises itself in discharging 
its tasks. (b) The similarity of Christ and believers 
must be more fully recognised. MRitschl does not 
intend to deny the originality or uniqueness of Christ ; 
only to affirm very strongly that Christ reproduces 
in the community which He has founded His own 
relation to God. (c) In His prophetic function Christ 
represents God to man, and in His priestly man to God ; 
but both of these functions are subordinate to His 
kingly as founder of the Kingdom of God on earth, 
as establishing for Himself and His Church dominion 
over the world, a transcendence and independence 
of personal life in communion with God above all the 
threats and hindrances the world may offer, or, as 
Paul puts it, the assurance that ‘all things work 
together for good to those who love God,’ that nothing 
can separate the believer from the love of God (Rom. 
vill. 28, 38, 39). (d) As the kingly function was 
exercised in the humiliation, so are the priestly and 
prophetic functions still exercised in the exaltation ; 
the change of state does not affect the continuity of 
the vocation. All these are undoubtedly theological 
refinements to be approved. 

(ii) Ritschl denies that there is any hindrance in 
God or man to forgiveness which needs to be removed. 
On the one hand, man’s sin is regarded by God as due 
to ignorance, and so forgivable; on the other, God’s 


1 English translation of vol. iii. by H. R. Mackintosh and A. B. Macaulay, 
1900. See The Ritschlian Theology, by the writer, pp. 271-77, 285-86, 316-33. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 177 


wrath is an eschatological conception, and is directed 
only against those who finally resist His purpose, who 
refuse forgiveness. The positive motive of God in 
forgiving men is His intention to establish the King- 
dom of God among men, as the religious good of 
fellowship with God and the moral task of the life 
of love among men. The realisation of this forgive- 
ness depends on Christ as the founder of the Kingdom, 
who maintains unbroken His religious unity with God 
in His trust and surrender even unto death. This He 
does as the representative of His community before 
God, since He can and does reproduce in it that same 
attitude towards God. The believer who is both 
historically and logically dependent on the com- 
munity appropriates by faith what Christ has done 
for him and will do in him. 

(iu) A valuable thought is that the work of Christ 
must be related to the fulfilment of God’s purpose, 
the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, as 
both a religious good and a moral task; to His own 
personal development in carrying out His vocation ; 
and to the believer’s own experience and character. 
As will afterwards be more fully urged, he sets aside 
far too easily the punitive aspect of God’s dealings 
with man. He takes out of the experience of Christ 
what has been most precious to the believer, when 
he denies the vicarious character of the sufferings of 
Christ. He contradicts the teaching of Jesus in its 
stress on the worth of every soul to God, when he 
so entirely subordinates the individual to the com- 
munity. It may be added that some of his school 
stand nearer to the common evangelical position than 
he does. 

(11) Dr. Denney’s The Christian Doctrine of 
Reconciliation (1917) may be regarded as the latest 
contribution of primary importance on the sub- 
ject. 

(1) His comparison of the three works which have 
just been discussed deserves quotation. ‘ One char- 
acteristic of all these books is that, to a far greater 
degree than those which preceded them, they rest 

M 


178 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


on the basis of history and experience. They are 
all conscious of Jesus as well as of Christ, and con- 
scious that, whatever the work of Christ may be, it 
must arise naturally out of the life of Jesus. He is 
not conceived as here to carry out any plan of salva- 
tion, but He is the Saviour by being what He is, 
doing what He does, and suffering what He suffers, 
as the relations in which He finds Himself require. 
There is nothing artificial in the work of the Saviour ; 
it is ethical in its inspiration and achievement from 
beginning to end. It is ethical also in the mode of its 
appropriation. The two German writers, to avoid 
risks in different directions, lay stress here on the idea 
of the Church. Perhaps what Schleiermacher is most 
afraid of is magic, the kind of appropriation of Christ 
and His grace which is taught in the sacramental 
doctrines of the Church of Rome. . . . Mysticism, on 
the other hand, in the sense of a direct and immedi- 
ate contact between Christ and the believing soul, is 
Ritschl’s bugbear; and the Church, in the ethical life 
of which the Christianity of the individual is kept 
within sound moral limits, is part of His defence 
against it.’ ‘M‘Leod Campbell distinguishes more 
emphatically than either Schleiermacher or Ritschl 
Christ’s dealing with men on the part of God and His 
dealing with God on the part of men.’ He, following 
Jonathan Edwards, restores the connection of Christ’s 
work as substitute or representative of man with love. 
‘ Vicariousness is seen to be only another name for 
love: under the influence of love men make the case 
of others their own; and even if we speak of Christ as 
our substitute, it is because love has impelled Him to 
make our situation His. Side by side with the altered — 
emphasis at this point comes a new sense that what 
Christ does for us must be more definitely related to 
what He produces in us. His identification of Him- 
self with us must have as its aim and issue an identi- 
fication on our part of ourselves with Him. The 
vocabulary of imputation, if not displaced by that 
of identification, is interpreted through it... . It 

will not be denied that in such thoughts as these 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 179 


personality gets the place, or something like the place, 
which is its due.’ # 

(ii) Dr. Denney’s own exposition of the subject may 
now be briefly summarised :—(a) His experimental 
basis is shown in his choosing the conception of re- 
conciliation as his governing idea. While reconcilia- - 
tion in some form is indispensable for every religion, 
Christian reconciliation is inseparable from Christ, 
both in His historical actuality and as He is now 
present by His Spirit. The initiative in reconciliation 
is with God, but the reconciliation is mutual. It is 
a reconciled God to whom man is reconciled. For- 
giveness is no less a real experience for God than for 
man, for to forgive makes a difference as well as to 
be forgiven. (b) Denney fully recognises that Christ 
was already doing His reconciling work in His treat- 
ment of sinners in His earthly life; yet he concen- 
trates his thought on the Cross. Accepting in sub- 
stance the view of M‘Leod Campbell, he rejects the 
use of the term repentance for the experience of Christ, 
as he rightly recognises that it is morally confusing 
to speak of the repentance or the punishment of the 
sinless. But, insisting that there is a real relation 
between death and sin, as the consummation of the 
divine reaction against sin in the moral order of the 
world, and that the Scriptures insist on something 
dreadful and mysterious in the death of Christ, he 
puts his conclusion in the form of a question: ‘ Can 
we say anything else than this: That while the Agony 
and the Passion were not penal in the sense of coming 
upon Jesus through a bad conscience, or making Him 
the personal object of divine wrath, they were penal 
in the sense that in that dark hour He had to realise 
to the full the divine reaction against sin in the race 
in which He was incorporated, and that without doing 
so to the uttermost He could not have been the 
Redeemer of that race from sin, or the Reconciler 
of sinful men to God?’? The crux of the problem 
lies just here: Is the inexorable reaction of God 
against sin in death a necessity of the very perfection 

1 Op. cit., pp. 115-19. 2 Op. cit., p. 273. 


180 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


of God? Is it so inexorable that in bringing to men 
the forgiveness of God, the Son of Man could not, and 
would not even if He could, escape the reaction ? 
Was it a necessity for love itself to share with as well 
as for man that reaction to its very consummation 
in death, and death apprehended as divine judgment ? 
It is impossible to offer any logical demonstration ; 
all that we can do is to confess an ultimate moral 
intuition which it would be as perilous to challenge 
as the authority of conscience itself. The writer 
must confess his entire concurrence with the state- 
ment by Denney just quoted. ‘The concrete view 
of Christ’s death and the conception of it as in some 
sense substitutionary cover the truth that there is 
something from which the death of Christ saves the 
sinner,’ namely, ‘from dying in our sins.’ * But for 
His death we should have died in our sins: we should 
have passed into the blackness of darkness with the 
condemnation of God abiding upon us.’? It is this 
conviction which explains the ‘ deep and ever present 
sense of debt to Christ,’ and ‘ the initzal assurance of 
a completed salvation which pervades the New Testa- 
ment.’ (c) The new theological standpoint is shown in 
the fact that Dr. Denney gives almost as much space 
to showing reconciliation as realised in human life 
as in proving reconciliation as achieved by Christ, 
to Christ’s work by His Spirit in us as to His work 
on His Cross for us. It is faith, and faith alone, 
which he recognises as the condition of salvation. 
While the writer agrees with him in his estimate 
of the efficacy and sufficiency of faith, he cannot 
but regret that Dr. Denney is not more sympathetic 
in his treatment of those who do not understand 
faith as comprehensively as he does. For it must be 
admitted that the doctrine of justification by faith 
alone has often been so stated as to justify the con- 
tention that faith must be supplemented by union 
with Christ, good works, the fellowship of the Church, 
and the grace of the sacraments. A more adequate 
conception of grace as Christ Himself acting savingly, 
1 Op. cit., pp. 282-83. 


DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 181 


and of faith as man’s full personal response to Christ’s 
action, such as Dr. Denney insists on, would correct 
all such errors, and would assign to all such means 
their proper function in the life of faith in the grace 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. 


CHAPTER VI 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT ON THE PERSON 
AND WORK OF CHRIST 


Tue two chapters preceding have shown that however 
adequate or appropriate to the time the ecclesiastical 
dogma of the person of Christ or the theological 
theory of His work may have been, we cannot be 
satisfied with the ideas or the terms which have been 
used; but, having learned from the past on the one 
hand what is essential to Christian faith, and on the 
other what defects there have been in the presentation 
of the truth about Christ, we must express our own 
thoughts in our own words so as to commend and 
defend to our own age the fact on which faith rests. 
(i) The modern method of the study of the Bible 
enables us to interpret the significance and estimate 
the value of Christ as no previous generation could. 
Giving Him the place which rightfully belongs to Him 
as the consummation of the divine revelation, assigning 
to Him the supreme authority as the Son knowing 
and making the Father known and correcting or 
completing all other divine oracles by His truth, we 
are to-day reaching a conception of God more fully, 
purely, and surely Christian than the Christian Church 
has ever possessed before. And it is this conception 
of God which Christ Himself gives to us which makes 
possible for us a constructive statement about His 
Person and Work such as could not be given before, 
just because the conception of God had hitherto been 
mixed up with elements of Jewish and Gentile thought 
that were not only not Christian, but even incon- 
sistent with what we have learned about the Father 
from the Son. First we see God in the light of the 


revelation in Jesus Christ, and then we seek to see 
182 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 183 


Christ Himself in the hight of the God so revealed 
to us. 

(11) Modern philosophy and modern psychology, 
influenced as their development has been more or less 
directly by the Christian reason and the Christian 
conscience, afford us categories of thought and corre- 
sponding terms which are much more adequate and 
appropriate, not only to our own time but for all time, 
to the essence of the Christian Faith. The framers 
of the creeds used the conceptions and the terminology 
of a philosophy which was not only not Christian, but 
was alien to what is most distinctive of Christianity. 
It is Christianity which has discovered personality 
by making possible a realisation of its promise and 
potency, undiscovered and untested before; and that 
makes the difference between Ancient and Modern 
thought. 

(111) Although it is in the next division of the present 
volume that the conception of God which Christ has 
given us will be expounded, and applied to the solution 
of many problems of thought and life, it will be neces- 
sary here to anticipate in some measure that discussion 
by dealing with such modifications of the idea of God 
as this modern way of looking at the world and life 
forces upon us—modifications which we shall find 
accord with the revelation which Christ has given us. 
Whether apart from Him the mind of man would have 
reached such conclusions or not we need not now 
decide. For our purpose this suffices, that philo- 
sophical theism is being led to a conception of God 
which is not only more in accord with His teaching 
than any other has been, but also enables us to reach 
a conception of His person and work that is more 
intelligible and credible than any hitherto offered 
to us. 

(iv) In dealing with the history in the two previous 
chapters, the separation there made between the 
person and the work of Christ was for convenience 
of treatment accepted, with the caution, however, 
that such a separation could not be regarded as 
satisfactory. In this constructive statement it is 


184 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


hoped to restore the unity, to interpret the person 
and the work by the one conception of God, the one 
conception of man, and the one conception of the 
relation of God and man, which illumines both the 
Incarnation and the Atonement.* It is because of 
what God eternally is, man is historically becoming ; 
and the relation between God and man should accord- 
ing to the will of God be, that not only did the 
Word become flesh, but the Captain of Salvation 
tasted death for every’man. Any conception of the 
Incarnation which does not see its fulfilment in 
Atonement is a structure left incomplete; and any 
conception of Atonement which does not find its 
potency and promise in Incarnation is a structure 
without foundations. How far the writer will succeed 
in convincing others he knows not, but this is his 
intention and aspiration. 

(v) The categories of thought to be used may be 
very briefly indicated. We must start with the idea 
of the divine immanence in the world, which in 
relation to man means the affinity and community 
of God and man. Next, we must use the idea of 
evolution as indicating that the method of that 
divine immanence is a progressive revelation of God, 
and a progressive realisation of a relation to God 
corresponding to that revelation. Lastly, it is only 
as we adequately explore the idea of personality in 
God and man that these two other ideas will gain 
their full moral and religious content. 

(1) Ancient pagan thought was pervaded by dualism, 
matter and mind, image and idea, world and God. 
This dualism is not overcome in Plato or Aristotle, 
and the conception of God which Christian theology 
took over from Greek philosophy was deistic, separ- 
ating the eternal and infinite perfect God from the 
imperfect world in time and space. Later Jewish 
thought felt the same influence, and, as has already 
been shown, the conception of the Logos in Philo 
assumed such a difference between God and the world 
that some such mediation appeared necessary. Media- 
tion may assert separation as well as relation. As 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 185 


used in the Fourth Gospel the conception of the Logos 
asserts a mediated immediacy of God in nature and 
history, as the mediating agency or activity is so 
entirely divine. The Word is not other than God, 
but God Himself in nature and history, and as man. 
-—~(i) The tendency of patristic thought was so to 
assert the difference between God and man that 
relation became an inscrutable mystery, an inex- 
plicable miracle. The attributes of God which philo- 
sophy affirms were emphasised to the exclusion of 
those activities of God with which religion is concerned. 
God was incomprehensible, indefinable, to be reached 
only by the way of negation. One of the heresies 
most severely condemned was Patripassianism, which 
affirmed that the Father Himself suffered. The meta- 
physics of this theory was crude enough, but it did 
stand for a truth which was being ignored. The 
Council of Chalcedon denounced as heresies both 
Nestorianism and Monophysitism or Eutychianism. 
‘Some daring to pervert the mystery of the dispensa- 
tion, which for our sakes the Lord undertook, and 
denying the propriety of the name Mother of God 
(@eotdxos), aS applied to the Virgin, and others bring- 
ing in a confusion and blending of natures, and fondly 
feigning that there is but one nature of the flesh and 
Godhead, and by this confusion teaching the monstrous 
doctrine that the divine nature of the Only-begotten 
is passible.’ 1 The Fathers do not recognise the in- 
consistency of their own position. Ifthe divine nature 
had no part in the Passion, neither had it in the 
being born, and therefore the mother of the human 
nature should not be described as the Mother of 
God. What for our present argument concerns us 
is the assertion that the divine nature could have no 
share in the sufferings of the human. For their 
thought God is so exalted above the world and man 
that He cannot be thought of as a fellow-sufferer 
with man. The difference of nature excludes com- 
munity of life. 
(ii) With such presuppositions it was quite impossible 
1 On Faith and the Creed, p. 214, 


186 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


to reach a satisfactory doctrine of the Incarnation. 
The creeds may have served the purpose which is the 
utmost that some of their defenders now claim for 
them, of having fixed the boundaries within which 
Christian thought may roam, but beyond which it 
may not stray—what must be affirmed and what 
must not be denied; but they certainly in their 
denials and affirmations have not provided thought 
with the data for a concrete conception of the person 
of Christ, the content of which can be made intelligible. 
And from the nature of the case it was impossible 
that they should. If we start from the difference 
of the natures we can never reach the unity of their 
relation. If we start from the unity of their relation 
and then ask how the natures are to be conceived, 
if the unity of relation is to be intelligible, we may 
hope for a solution of the problem. We do not then 
begin with God as infinite and eternal, but with God 
as present and active in the world of time and space. 
How this immanence is consistent with that tran- 
scendence is a question to which we must return when 
we deal with the nature of God: but we are entitled 
so to begin ; as we rise from facts to faith, our thought 
must pass from the immanent to the transcendent 
God. Not only is such an advance necessary for our 
understanding of the doctrine of the Incarnation: 
two reasons for it may be offered in the thought of 
to-day. 
(a) We do not and cannot think of the world as a 
completed machine, so constructed that, having once 
been started, it goes on of itself; we have to think 
of it rather as a growing organism, inadequate as _ 
the analogy is, or, what is more nearly adequate, an 
unfolding purpose. There is not only continuity of — 
movement, there is progress. The rigid atom has 
slipped out of the grasp of the man of science, and 
what he is now laying hold of by his hypothesis 1s 
force, ever active force. (The deism of the eighteenth 
century is an impossible mode of thought in_ the 
twentieth.) Were it not for other considerations which 
need not be discussed at this point, pantheism would 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 187 


be a much more timely way of looking at the world. 
It is in the realm of morals and religion that the 
defects of pantheism are discovered ; in the sphere of 
nature we must affirm an immanent God if we are 
to believe in God at all—a God constantly present 
and active in nature. If we think consistently we, 
cannot put a long series of secondary causes between 
the present order of nature and the First or Ultimate 
Cause; a system of nature.does not.exclude God from 
the world. Physical forces are God’s infinite power 
exercised in finite forms; natural laws are God’s. 
infinite wisdom expressed in finite forms. Because 
there is constancy and consistency in God’s presence 
and activity—His fidelity to His purpose and His 
promise, on which men can rely and with which they 
can co-operate—the effects of these physical forces 
are in accord with the natural laws man has dis- 
covered. Natural laws.are God’s habits of action _ 
in the world, the order of nature His character as so 
disclosed to us. As we shall see, in considering the 
next category of thought, that order of nature is not 
a rigid uniformity, but a continuous progress. There 
is no break in the divine action, as God does relate 
the present activity to the past: in creating the new 
He preserves the old, and the creation of the new is 
conditioned by the preservation of the old; He is 
not for ever extemporising the strange and unrelated. 
Physical and chemical conditions are preserved in 
the vital process, and the development of mind is 
conditioned by the growth of the organism. Yet, as 
these illustrations at once suggest, there are marked 
stages in the cosmic evolution, or the divine creation. 
We may describe this process as progress, because life 
has values matter alone has not, and mind values 
which do not belong to life alone. In the personal 
development of man, who is the consummation of 
the evolution as we know it, values emerge—truth, 
holiness, blessedness, love—which in the reason and 
conscience of man claim to be absolute. In human 
religion the Universe becomes, as it were, self-con- 
scious, for man, the creature, becomes conscious of 


188 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


and seeks to relate Himself to the Creator—nay, even 
in religion a divine revelation is apprehended, in 
which God makes Himself known and relates Himself 
to man as Father to child. The progress of the 
Universe lies in its becoming always more and more 
expressive of God, who at last discloses His secret 
in the ideals of man and the relation which through 
revelation is in religion established between God and 
man. The divine immanence is expressed in the 
words of the apostle, ‘im Him we live, and move, and 
have our being’ (Acts xvil. 28), but still more ade- 
quately in the doctrine of God with us in the living 
Christ and within us by His own Spirit. The most 
- mystical piety and the most speculative thought are 
of one accord as regards the immanence of God in 
nature and history, but more expressively in the inner 
life of the seer and the saint. 

(>) Mr. Wells is moved by the Zeitgeist, the spirit 
of the age, in his search for a God who will meet the 
human need, because He is a fellow-sufferer with man, 
and man may be a fellow-worker with Him. Political 
conditions do affect religious thinking, and the God 
of the older theology, enthroned in heaven, reproduced 
the Eastern despot. The democratic spirit of this 


age demands a God who is one of us. There is, it — 
must be granted, a great deal which is very crude) 


in all this thinking; but democracy is nearer truth 


than despotism, as it recognises the inherent, in- | 


alienable value of human personality. That the God 


in and through all must also be over all, even in order 
that He may be all to man which man needs and 
craves of God, is the complementary truth which we 
neglect at peril to our thought, with loss to our life. 
The agony and desolation through which the world 
passed in what is generally called the Great War, 
but we may hope and pray will one day be known as 
the Last War, made urgent and insistent the demand 
for the God whom, as Mr. Wells has discovered, he him- 


self needs—God who suffers and struggles with and | 


forman. The impassible God would be the monstrous 
heresy for the religious thought and life of to-day. 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 189 


God’s immanence finds its highest expression in His 
participation in love in the whole life and lot of man; 
and that is realised and revealed, not in Incarnation 
apart from the Cross, but in Incarnation as completed 
in the Cross. For these two reasons we may approach 
the problem of Christology from the standpoint of 
this demand for the divine immanence as a guiding 
principle. ? 

(2) As has already been indicated, the method of_ 
divine creation, as we know and understand it, is 
evolution. 

(i) There are two conceptions of evolution which at 
once confront us. On the assumption that nothing 
can be in the effect that is not in the conditions, that 
the principle of causality demands an exact equival- 
ence of antecedents and consequents, it is sometimes 
asserted that nothing can be evolved that is not 
already involved, that all nature and history were 
latent in the diffused matter with which the process 
began. Mr. Herbert Spencer was a past master in 
the verbal jugglery by which he reduced morality, 
religion, science, art, society to be nothing more nor 
other than matter-in-motion. Matter may have 
‘the promise and the potency of life and mind,’ but 
is fulfilment no more nor other than promise, or 
actuality than potency ? If the Universe be a closed 
system, then we are driven to the conclusion that the 
evolution must be explicable by the resident forces 
under inherent laws; but then the explanation must 
escape us altogether: how can the always-the-same 
be producing the ever-different ? A machine repeats 
the same operation, however complicated that may 
be; it does not so alter its structure that it becomes 
capable of still more complicated operations. We are 
driven to the other conception of evolution, which 
Ward,! following Harvey, describes as epigenesis, and 
Bergson as creative evolution. ‘The new is not simply 
educed from the old; it is produced, but is other and 
more than the old. The élan vital of Bergson is 
creative. Such a conception of a finite Universe 

1 Realm of Ends, p. 98. 


190 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


self-enclosed is a self-contradiction. The only way 
we can make it intelligible to ourselves at all is to 
think of the finite Universe as so related to the 
Infinite God that His activity is not only preserving 
what already is, but is ever creating what is yet to be. 
For the ends of chemical and physical science it may 
be altogether legitimate to assume that the matter 
and the force in the Universe are a fixed quantum, 
although more recent speculations seem to be breaking 
down the rigid barriers of a closed system ; for philo- 
sophy as an endeavour to make the total reality in- 
telligible it is imperative to recognise that evolution 
as we know and understand it is creative, that the 
finite universe involves the constant activity of the 
infinite God. 

(11) We have now, ‘ greatly daring,’ to try and con- 
ceive more distinctly that creative activity. That 
activity involves both self-limitation and _ self-fulfil- 
ment, or, to use words suggested by the New Testa- 
ment, kenosis (Phil. 11. 7) and plerosis (Eph. 1. 28).1 

(a) God must limit infinite power in finite forces, 
infinite wisdom in finite laws. As the work expresses 
the worker, He limits Himself in the measure in 
which the work is inadequately expressive of Himself. 
Matter is less expressive of God than life, and life 
than mind, and mind as instinct than as reason and 
conscience. God limits Himself in so far as life has a 
spontaneity of its own, and mind a liberty, so that 
there may be a development of life—as seems to be 
the case for instance in parasites—and of mind, as in 
the sin of man, which is contrary to the divine in- 
tention. God may so limit Himself in the creature, 
in bestowing spontaneity of life or liberty of mind, 
that the creature may oppose itself to the Creator. 
God has accepted the limitation of an opposition in 
His Universe to Himself. The writer is convinced 
that human liberty can be harmonised with divine 
sovereignty only as a voluntary self-limitation by God 
is admitted in the making of man as he is. Further, 


1 See The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, by P. T. Forsyth, Lectures XI. 
and XII. 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 1oT 


the self-limitation of power to let man be free seems 
to involve also a self-limitation of knowledge, so 
that God knows free acts before the choice is made 
only as possible and not as actual. v That the Creation 
might culminate in ‘ self-knowledge, self-reverence, 
self-control’ in personality freely willing the reality 
of its ideals, God set bounds to His infinitude in His 
creative activity in a finite Universe, and most of all 
in man as free to oppose or to co-operate with God 
in the fulfilment of His purpose. Our thought must 
recognise a Sself-limitation (a kenosis, or self-empty- 
ing) in God. 

(b) This self-emptying is, however, for a self- 
~ expression which is a self-fulfilling. God is manifest- 
ing more and more of Himself in the creative evolution. 
When in man a creature becomes capable of receiving 
the revelation of God in the ideals which are reality 
in God, and in a personal relation, conscious and 
voluntary, is realising these ideals, the self-expression 
is distinct and the self-fulfilment certain. When in 
Jesus the Christ our Lord the human development 
culminated in One who knew Himself Son of God, 
and God as Father, and who perfectly did the will 
of God as He abode in intimate communion with 
God, that self-expression within the Universe was 
adequate and the self-fulfilment complete. If we 
take the view of evolution which treats the Universe 
as a closed system, then we must not affirm that 
evolution accounts for Him. But if we accept the 
more adequate view that evolution is epigenesis, that 
it is creative, then we can regard Him as man as the 
highest stage of that progress of God’s self-expression 
and self-fulfilment in His Universe. He is the promise 
and the potency of that family of God perfect as 
is the Father in Heaven, and possessing eternal life 
in Him, which is the goal of the long course of nature 
and of history. He came in ‘the fullness of the 
times,’ when the conditions were prepared for that 
consummating creative act of God. 

(3) How God can express and fulfil Himself in man, 
and finally and perfectly in Christ, is a matter that 


192 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


demands fuller inquiry.” There must be a close 
affinity and community between God and man, if 
the perfect man could also be verily God. 

(1) Modern philosophy as contrasted with ancient 
is subjective and not objective, and the development 
of psychology during the last century has given to 
the category of personality an importance it had not 
before. By personality we mean the conscious subject 
thinking, feeling, willing; the self-conscious subject 
aware of these activities, and seeking self-satisfaction, 
self-expression, self-realisation in them; the subject 
which can compare its own actuality with the ideals, 
truth, holiness, blessedness, love, for which it strives 
and in which it can find its fulfilment. In man 
personality is hampered and hindered in fulfilling 
itself by conditions imposed upon it which it cannot 
control. It is externally limited and internally in- 
complete. But it not only has the desire for and 
makes the effort after * self-knowledge, self-reverence, 
self-control,’ but regards its ideals, not as illusions, 
but as promises of what yet will be. Even in man 
personality reaches beyond and rises above actuality 
with its limitations and imperfections. Hence it is 
an unjustified assumption that such finitude is a 
necessary condition of personality, and that we cannot 
therefore ascribe personality to God. 

(11) If self-consciousness in man emerges along with 
consciousness of not-self, that does not prove that 
God cannot be personal, since there is no not-self 
for Him, as He is total reality: for, in the first 
place, there must even in man be a sense of self, how- 
ever vague, before the contrast with the not-self can 
emerge at all; and, in the second place, as man 
develops personality, it is his own inner life more than 
the outer world that gives content to his conscious- 
ness, and it is the aspiration of the developing self 
to be thus more and more self-sufficing, rich in its 
own inward treasures; thirdly, just because God is 
God, He can and does constitute Himself that inner 
life in which the contrast of self and not-self is possible 
without an external reality not dependent on Him. 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 193 


If instead of taking the words infinite and absolute 
in their literal sense, unlimited and unrelated, a sense 
which would compel us to think of God only in 
negations, we define them as self-limited and self- 
related, and if man as personal aims so to determine 
himself, then these two attributes of God are not only 
consistent with personality, but we can give them 
meaning only as attributes of a personal subject. 
Once more, if man does hold the place in the process 
of creation which he seems to hold, as the consumma- 
tion of its progress, and if the ideals which command 
his aspiration and effort claim absolute value, then 
his relative insignificance physically is no adequate 
ground for charging him with folly and audacity if 
he conceives God, not in his own likeness, limited and 
imperfect, but as infinitely and perfectly the reality 
of his ideals, the source of these absolute values.! 

(iii) This conclusion becomes an assurance of faith 
in religion. Man can and does realise God’s presence, 
holds communion with Him, and gains satisfaction 
in Him. Man’s personality as imperfect is receptive 
of and responsive to God’s perfect personality as 
communicative. Unless the whole religious thought 
and life of mankind be an illusion and a mockery, 
there is communion between God and man. Earthly 
goods are often sought in religion, and moral goodness 
is sometimes the dominant desire; but the core of 
religion is the hunger and the thirst of the soul for 
God, the living God, in whom alone man fully lives. 
Just as there has been evolution in nature and history, 
so has there been development in religion.” The 
unique significance and value of the Hebrew religion 
is that there we can trace as in no other a development 
of religion which was the channel of a progressive 
divine revelation. There was a correspondence in a 
Godward movement of man, and a manward move- 
ment of God, faith receiving and responding to grace. 
Historically that double movement is completed in 
Jesus Christ. The immanent activity of God in the 
Universe was consummated in that perfect human 

1 See Lotze’s Philosophy of Religion, Eng. trans., ch. ii. 
N 


194 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


receptivity for and responsiveness to God. But that 
was met by a transcendent act of God communicative 
of such fullness of light, life, and love from the very 
being of God Himself, that the secret of what God is 
~ was at last disclosed, the eternal reality of God was 
revealed. “ When we come in a later section to discuss 
the doctrine of the Trinity, 1t will be necessary to 
consider how we must conceive the eternal reality of 
God Himself. At the present stage it will suffice that 
the argument here developed enables us to conceive 
Christ as the perfect human. personality, perfectly 
receptive of and Peas to the perfect communica- 
tion of God. 

(iv) For the static conception of natures we sub- 
stitute the dynamic conception of personality. In- 
stead of conjoining in one person the differences of 
these two natures, we show the concurrence of the 
divine activity manward and the human activity 
Godward—an affinity that fitly issues in community. 
Imperfect but receptive and responsive human per- 
sonality becomes the channel of the manifestation 
and operation in history of the communicative perfect 
personal God. We must think of human personality 
as individual, a person, and so must give up the notion 
of an impersonal nature. We must think of the Logos 
or Son as personal, but we cannot think of Him as 
individual, a person in the modern sense of the word, 
which, it need not be added, is not the sense of the 
creeds. In the view here presented human person- 
ality is completed in this relation to the personal 
God, because it was for such community of life with 
God that man was made.” But this is not the same 
as the doctrine of Leontius and John of Damascus, 
the enhypostasis of the impersonal human nature by 
the personal Logos. As the conception of personality 
is dynamic, and not static, we must conceive the 
Incarnation as itself progressive, a developing human 
receptivity and responsiveness, the condition of an 
increasing communicativeness on the part of God. 
Jesus became more certain of His Sonship as His 
claim was challenged by human unbelief. As has 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 195 


been shown in a previous chapter, the intuition of His 
eternal relation to God (pre-existence) came to Him 
as He was exposed to the derision of His foes. His 
human experience of trial, temptation, sorrow, struggle, 
disappointment, and opposition disciplined and de- 
veloped the faith of the Son to receive more abund- 
antly the grace of the Father. These two terms both 
affirm a relation and a difference of each in the relation. 
The Father teaches, gives, approves; the Son learns, 
accepts, and submits. ‘ He learned obedience through 
the things that He suffered’ (Heb. v. 8). Such an 
experience was necessary to perfect the relation of 
dependence and surrender of the Son to the Father. 
We are in the Gospels in the realm of morals and 
religion, of personal relationship, and not of abstract 
metaphysics, in which the creeds move and so fail 
to do justice either to historical reality or religious 
and moral interests. As the previous argument has 
shown, the conception here offered is not humanitarian 
nor Unitarian. The immanent divine activity in 
nature and history is completed in the human per- 
sonality ; there is the transcendent divine act which 
all that went before does not explain in the perfect 
divine content which is given to this personality... 

(4) Calvin’s view that even apart from the purpose 
of redemption there might have been a divine In- 
carnation has already been mentioned. The previous 
argument leads to that conclusion. The relation of 
God to the world and man would be incomplete with- 
out such a consummation. The Creation can be 
completed in the Creator, God as love must give His 
life to and find His life in man as perfectly as can be 
conceived. Without in any way making light of what 
sin means in the world, it is to the writer incredible 
that it should be the decisive factor in determining 
that God should become man. The fact with which 
we are concerned, however, is not Incarnation in a 
sinless race, but Incarnation not only for the revelation 
of God to man but for the redemption of man from 
sin. It is a very serious error to confine the work of 
Christ to the sacrifice of the Cross, or in that work to 


196 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


separate the revelation of God and the redemption 
of man. If we do not narrow the meaning of revela- 
tion, as an intellectualist theology tends to do, to a 
communication of knowledge about God, and mean 
by it the manifestation of God in deed as in word, 
n passion as in action, we may affirm that the revela- 
tion of God in Christ is the redemption of man through 
Him. To know the Father is to be forgiven, and to 
become a child of God. Nor must we isolate the 
revelation of God and redemption of man in Christ 
from the permanent and universal activity of God. 
‘O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there 
is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. 
And He shall redeem Israel from all his imiquities ’ 
(Ps. cxxx. 7, 8). Rightly did Dr. Bruce, in his book 
on The Chief End of Revelation, insist that it was 
redemption. In controversy Paul opposes the Law 
and the Gospel, but law did not exhaust the content 
of the divine revelation in the Old Testament. The 
Holy One of Israel is the Saviour (Is. xlii. 3). ° Christ 
Himself was not Redeemer on the Cross alone. The 
truth He taught, the holiness He lived, the grace He 
showed to sinners, the love He bestowed on all, were 
redemptive, wherever faith was receptive of and re- 
sponsive to Him. He forgave and He saved during 
His earthly ministry, and His Cross came not as a 
contradiction of that ministry but as its completion, 
having the same motive, purpose, and method of 
redemption. 

(5) What we have to interpret is the Incarnation 
as redemptive, as affected by the fact of sm. We 
must, but only as far as is necessary for the immediate 
purpose, consider what sin is and how it affects the 
relation of God and man. 

(i) We are not here concerned, as we shall be in 
a later section, with the origin of sin in the race, or 
its beginnings in the individual, but simply with its 
nature. Moral evil in man as the violation of the 
laws of his own nature is vice, as the violation of the 
laws of human society is crime, as the disturbance of 
the relation to God is sin. It has both its moral and 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 197 


its religious aspect in this relation. As disobedience 
to God’s law as written in the human conscience, it is 
an offence against God, a challenge of His authority, 
a resistance of His purpose. As distrust of God’s 
love as that love makes its appeal to man both in 
His goodness and His grace, it is an injury to God, 
it is a withholding from Him of what He desires, of 
that for which God made man, for He made him for 
fellowship with as well as likeness to Himself. | 
~ (11) What are the effects of sin? (a) First of all, 
there is guilt and the sense of guilt. By guilt we 
mean not only that man is hable to punishment, 
exposed to the consequences of his wrong-doing, 
physical, social, personal, but that God’s judgment 
rests upon him: the holy love of God is not only 
distressed, but disapproves. God’s relation to man is 
so intimate that He cannot be indifferent to man’s 
sin: He is, and must be, affected by it in this twofold 
way. He is not only grieved by the injury and loss 
which man brings on himself by his sin. Against the 
sin itself there is a reaction, an inevitable reaction, of 
the perfection of God—not a mild displeasure, but a 
severe disapprobation. We shall be quite incapable 
of understanding the truth of the Atonement unless we 
have ourselves experienced this reaction against sin, 
this judgment on sin, and, having felt its necessity in 
ourselves, cannot but hold that it is inevitable for 
God. If a man believes that God as love forgives 
sin easily at no cost, because there is no such inevit- 
able reaction against sin, he cannot be made to under- 
stand what the Cross means. This guilt is a fact for 
God in the relation between God and man, and not 
merely a feeling in man about that relation. In man 
there is the sense of guilt, the apprehension, more 
or less adequate, of the fact of guilt. Man becomes 
aware that his relation to God has been thus affected. 
_ This sense of guilt brings to the religious man an acute 
distress. 

(b) Man is so constituted that for every action there 
is a reaction on himself. In acting he forms habits, 
and his habits fix his character. We can maintain 


198 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


man’s continued liberty and responsibility only as 
we recognise, as the facts of experience warrant us in 
doing, that the character does not exhaust the per- 
sonality, but that there are reserves of psychic energy 
which can with an adequate stimulus be so evoked 
as to make a fresh start—reformation or conversion— 
actual, even where there is apparently a fixity of 
character in evil. Nevertheless, the common conse- 
quence of sin, and continuance in sin, is enslavement 
to sin. It is in regard to the vices of drunkenness and 
uncleanness that this bondage is most glaringly seen ; 
but a man may also be a slave of selfishness, temper, 
greed. Paul has most vividly described this tragedy 
in Romans vii. 7-25. The temptation grows stronger 
and the will becomes weaker, and the contest becomes 
so unequal that defeat seems inevitable, unless other 
forces can be brought into the field, such as the grace 
of God. The sense of guilt will intensify this feeling 
of bondage. Estranged from God, the man feels him- 
self alone with his sin and cast on his own resources. 
An uneasy conscience will mean an enfeebled will. 
If forgiveness remove the sense of guilt it will also be 
a freeing and strengthening of the will. It is because 
of this bondage to sin that the law of God is a burden. 
The contrast between desire and duty does emerge 
in every moral consciousness, but it becomes a con- 
flict only when desire has broken bounds, has become 
rebellious, and has established a tyranny over the 
will. Setting aside such commandments of men as 
are arbitrary and provoke disobedience, the law of 
God, the ideal of what man should be, will approve 
its worth to the conscience, and obedience will be 
not bondage but freedom. Given, however, on the 
one hand this estrangement from God, and on the 
other this enslavement to sin, then the claims of the 
law will appear grievous, and the inability to meet 
them and the self-reproach which failure will bring 
will make the law burdensome. The yoke of obedi- 
ence can be made easy and the burden of submission 
light only as the love of Christ becomes the constrain- 
ing motive, and the power of His Spirit brings the 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 199 


deliverance of the will from its enslavement. When 
the guilt of sin is removed and the bondage is broken, 
then also there is emancipation from the law as itself 
a bondage. 

(c) When Shakespeare put on the lips of Hamlet 
the confession, ‘ conscience doth make cowards of 
us all,’ he uttered the common human experience. 
Unless a man has reasoned himself out of the belief, 
there is a dread of judgment to come. Death so 
bounds the human horizon, that it is at the gates 
of death that that dark shadow lingers. There are 
consequences of sin in this life, but they are not 
exhausted here. Many transgressors do seem to evade 
the penalty which they deserve. The belief in God 
as holy and righteous deepens this dread. God will 
hereafter deal with men more exactly according to 
their deeds than He does here. The writer cannot 
regard these ideas as superstitions which can be dis- 
carded. «If for Christians this dread has been removed, 
it is not because it has been disproved as an illusion, 
but because in the new relation to God, into which 
Christ brings men, the old things have passed away 
and all things have become new. It is the love of 
God which has cast out the fear.v The writer agrees 
with Dr. Denney! that Jesus Himself did regard 
death as the penalty of sin, and that the agony and 
desolation of Gethsemane and Calvary can be under- 
stood only as we recognise that for Him death was 
not merely natural occurrence, but really divine 
judgment. We may freely admit that as physical 
dissolution death is a natural occurrence, and that 
man as a living organism is necessarily subject to it. 
We need not assume that death as such was introduced 
into the world as a consequence of man’s sin, for we 
know it was here long before man’s coming. We need 
not indulge in any speculation as to whether sinless 
man would have escaped the common lot altogether, 
or what it might have been for him. For man the 
natural occurrence becomes a personal experience, 
the content of which must be determined by what 

1 The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 268. 


200 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


he has made himself, how he stands related to God, 
and how it affects even human relationships. It is 
a goal which is believed to be the starting-point of a 
fresh course. It is not merely man’s sense of guilt 
which subjectively invests death with darkness and 
terror; as the sense of guilt corresponds with the 
fact of guilt now, so it is only reasonable to think that 
in death or after death God does deal with man, if 
unredeemed, to bring home to him, as life has not yet 
brought home, the reality of the divine judgment on 
sin. That itself may be an act of grace and may 
prove to him who so receives and responds to it a 
means of grace, but even then the joy of salvation 
will come only through the pain of Judgment. 

(6) This is the disease: what isthe remedy? This 1s 
the need: how can it be met? The writer himself is at 
homein the language of the New Testament and of Chris- 
tian theology ; but as he desires to reach those to whom 
some of that language is a difficulty, he will try to set 
out all that is essential in the language of common life. 

(i) The word forgiveness is a familiar word, as in 
human relations there is occasion and demand for 
it. What do we mean by it? (a) It is not primarily 
the prevention of the consequences of sin, physical, 
social, and personal, nor the suspension of such further 
judgment as may be anticipated. A man who by his 
vice has injured his health does not recover it as 
soon as he turns from his evil ways and is forgiven. 
A man who by dishonesty has forfeited the confidence 
of his fellows does not at once recover his reputation 
when he returns to the ways of uprightness. A man 
when he becomes a Christian does not always at once 
break off all the habits which had hitherto enslaved 
him. But, nevertheless, forgiveness does affect even 
these consequences: not only would continuance in 
sin have aggravated these consequences, but the 
changed man changes the effect of these consequences 
upon himself. Even if the experience of God’s grace 
does not by the peace of mind it brings promote health 
better than it would have been, he bears it in such a 
way as makes his experience other than it would 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 201 


have been. His fellows may be slower in restoring 
him than they should be, but, the genuineness of the 
change having been proved, he may regain his position 
in society, and, even if he does not, he will bear what 
falls on him meekly, and it will be to him a means of 
grace. As we shall show, one of the effects of forgive- 
ness is deliverance from sin’s bondage, not at once 
complete, but progressive, so that the reaction on a 
man’s nature of his former sin will be counteracted 
by the reaction of his nature by faith to God’s grace. 
It is as untrue as it is cruel to say that forgiveness 
does not in any way affect the consequences of sin ; 
for where it does not modify them, it changes the man 
so that they are not the same to him. As regards 
the judgment to come, that has been made far too 
prominent in a great deal of preaching about forgive- 
ness. ‘To escape hell and to get into heaven matters 
little in comparison with being right with God. If 
that relation be restored to what it should be, then 
the best that hope can look for is assured. Even to 
the Christian death and the Unseen World may bring 
home judgment, but that will be for the reconciled 
unto fuller salvation. ‘ There is now no condemnation 
to them that are in Christ Jesus’ (Rom. viii. 1). 

(b) What forgiveness primarily is, is the restoration 
of the personal relation to God which sin has disturbed. 
As on God’s part it is the removal of the guilt, so on 
man’s part it is relief from the sense of guilt. The 
sin remains, and God’s judgment of disapproval on 
the sin remains ; and where there is no such judgment, 
there is a passing over of sin, but not a forgiveness 
of it (Rom. in. 25). In forgiveness the sinner is so 
disassociated from his sin that the judgment of it 
does not fall on him as a continuance of that divine 
displeasure which hinders the loving communion with 
God which God wills for man. God’s grace wills so 
to disassociate the sinner from His sin, and so seeks 
and strives with men that they will disassociate them- 
selves from their sin; and when by repentance and 
faith this disassociation has taken place, then the for- 
giveness God intends and makes it His endeavour 


202 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


to effect becomes actual. As the displeasure of God 
is removed, so the distrust of man passes away. God 
delights in instead of being grieved with the sinner, 
now the child; and man, instead of feeling estranged 
from God, has the joy of God’s Fatherhood. 

(c) It seems necessary at this point in the argument 
to remove a misconception which is very common 
in regard to forgiveness. To blunt the edge of the 
insistent teaching of the New Testament on the duty 
of men to forgive one another, it is often insisted 
that there must be repentance before there can be 
forgiveness; and no sign or offer of forgiveness 1s 
made to call forth the repentance. As forgiveness 
affects the mutual relation of persons, it cannot be 
one-sided. It is not actualised when only offered, 
but only when also accepted. But the person who 
has been wronged need not wait till forgiveness is 
sought ; if he always did, there would be much less 
experience of forgiveness than there is. It is not only 
the privilege but the duty of the wronged to offer that 
forgiveness, and even to urge it with love’s importunity, 
so that he who has done the wrong may be shamed 
out of the moral indifference or defiance that continues 
in sin unforgiven. It is the duty of the good man to 
lessen the evil that is in the world, and sin unrepented 
and unforgiven is an evil that even at a great cost 
should be removed. God does not wait for man’s 
repentance: He takes the initiative in freely and fully 
offering forgiveness, in beseeching men to be forgiven. 
It is only thus that men are brought to the repentance 
and the faith that makes forgiveness a blessed ex- 
perience. While there are passages in the Old Testa- 
ment which give the impression that God will forgive 
if men repent, yet even the sacrifices which had to 
be offered in token of penitence and with prayer for 
pardon were regarded as gifts of grace, a way God 
Himself had appointed by which He might show His 
grace to men. It is true that their efficacy was 
limited to offences which were not a defiance of God’s 
authority. But the highest teaching in the Old 

1 See Old Testament Theology, by Schultz, ii. pp. 87-89. 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 2038 


Testament is this, that judgment is God’s strange 
work (Is. xxvii. 21), and that in mercy is His delight 
(Mic. vii. 18). In Jesus, in His earthly ministry even 
as in the Cross, God takes the initiative, makes the 
approach and the appeal, proclaims forgiveness, calls 
for penitence and faith. Those ‘ righteous ’ men know 
not Christ who are unbending in judgment on sin 
until forgiveness is sought in penitence and faith, and 
who even do not welcome the beginnings of penitence 
with encouragement, and insist on a self-humiliation 
of the penitent which may leave behind seeds of 
bitterness. It must be confessed that the nations 
calling themselves Christian have not since the end 
of the War stood the test of forgiving as God forgives, 
spontaneously, magnanimously. Christ’s death we 
shall not understand if we suppose that it procures 
forgiveness instead of recognising that it conveys 
forgiveness in such a way as evokes the penitence and 
faith in which it is received. 

(11) The first effect of forgiveness offered is the re- 
pentance and faith which are the conditions of its 
full actuality. Just as the action of the light on a 
sensitive part of the organism resulted in the develop- 
ment of the eye, so the conviction that forgiveness is 
possible produces that inward condition in which it 
becomes actual. God’s judgment on sin which the 
forgiveness conveys is reproduced in the sinner’s own 
judgment on his sin in his penitence. He severs 
himself from his sin even as God in forgiving wills 
to separate him. God’s judgment passes away as 
the penitent makes that judgment his own. The 
offer of forgiveness inspires man’s faith in the goodwill 
of God, not in forgiving only, but in imparting all 
other gifts which may be needed to restore the rela- 
tion to Him.’ Faith in the sufficiency of God’s grace 
relieves fear, fills with courage, and so the bondage of 
sin is broken. A new motive enters into the life to 
exclude all other conflicting motives. ‘The love of 
Christ constraineth us’ (2 Cor. v. 14). There is ‘ the 
expulsive power of the new affection.’ A new power 
is experienced: ‘I can do all things through Him 


204 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


which strengtheneth me’ (Phil. iv. 13). Now ‘all 
things work together for good to those who love God,’ 
because loved of God. Nothing can now separate 
from that love (Rom. viii. 28). 

(7) While Jesus in His earthly ministry conveyed 
to men the forgiveness of God, He Himself looked 
forward to His death as the highest service He could 
render, the giving of His life as a ransom for many 
(Matt. xx. 28); and at the Supper He described His 
death as the sacrifice of the new covenant of forgive- 
ness (Matt. xxvi. 28; cf. 1 Cor. xi. 25). Christian 
faith has linked together the forgiveness of sin and 
the sacrifice of the Cross. As has been shown in a 
previous chapter, the writer accepts Paul’s inter- 
pretation not merely on his apostolic authority, but 
as personal convictions to which his religious experi- 
ence and his moral conscience give a hearty assent. 
It is not necessary to repeat here what has already 
been said, but the conclusion of that discussion may 
be recalled. In Paul’s teaching the Cross of Christ 
does somehow express God’s condemnation of sin 
more impressively and effectively than man’s endur- 
ance of its penalties could, and yet also convincingly 
conveys the assurance of God’s forgiveness, and thus 
so evokes both penitence and faith that the sinner 
forgiven becomes a child of God, called to be a saint, 
an heir with Christ of the inheritance of the saints 
in light. Paul does not clearly answer three questions, 
and with these we must now try to deal. What did 
Christ endure? How could He so endure? Why 
must He so endure? Or, putting the matter another 
way, we must try to show the actuality, the possibility, 
and the necessity of the sacrifice of Christ. The first 
answer must be exegetical, the second psychological, 
and the third theological. 

(i) As the record of Gethsemane and Calvary shows, 
the agony of the one was an anticipation of the desola- 
tion of the other. What He shrank and prayed to 
be delivered from, if it were possible, was that ex- 
perience of being forsaken by God. He regarded 
death as the penalty of sin, as involving the possi- 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 205 


bility of the loss of the unbroken fellowship with 
God which He as Son had enjoyed with the Father. 
He so identified Himself with sinful mankind as to 
feel all the consequences of sin, including this its 
ultimate consequence, for Him the worst that He 
could experience. We must not say that He felt 
Himself guilty, or that He was punished, or that He 
was exposed to God’s wrath, for all such language 
involves an intolerable confusion of what is possible 
for the sinful and the Sinless. But in His own heart 
He felt the consequences as no sinner could do; for 
on the one hand He loved the sinful race as no other 
has done, and so felt with and for it as no other 
could do, and on the other He so loved God that He 
saw sin and all it involves as God sees it. Sinless, 
He could suffer for sin as much more as His love for 
God and for man excelled all other love. To this 
strain was His faith put, that He as Son of God should 
as Brother of man lose, if only for a moment of 
uttermost desolation, the comfort and joy of the love 
of the Father. In that experience He tasted death 
for every man; but before He gave up the ghost, 
faith was once more confident, and it was into His 
Father’s hands that He committed His spirit. This 
to the writer seems the least we can dare to say of the 
actuality of the Sacrifice upon the Cross. 

(11) The actuality as thus described compels us to 
explore the possibility. How on the one hand could 
the Sinless so identify Himself with the sinful as to 
endure the consequences of sin to the uttermost ? 
How on the other hand could the well-beloved Son, 
on whom God’s approval ever rested, endure this 
utmost consequence, that He should feel Himself for- 
saken of God? Christ’s experience was unique as 
He Himself was, and yet human experience offers 
analogies. (a) The innocent suffer with and for the 
guilty, not only in outward lot, but also in inward 
life. The mother of a drunken son suffers the shame 
of his sin, even if her outward circumstances may be 
in no way injuriously affected. There are Geth- 
semanes and Calvarys within the loving heart. The 


206 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


more intense the affection, the more complete is the 
participation in another’s life. Those who carp and 
eavil at substitution as a theological fiction show 
only their ignorance of or insensibility to what is 
noblest and most heroic in human life. Love by its 
very nature is vicarious; it freely takes another’s 
place to share his struggle and bear his burden. It 
was because the love of Christ excelled all human 
love, that His self-identification with the sinful race 
exceeded what the common mind and heart can 
comprehend. It is only as we learn to love with 
Him that we reach the fellowship of His sufferings, 
being in our own experience conformed to His death 
(Phil. iti. 10). 

(b) The religious consciousness does not apprehend 
the total reality of God even in His immediate in- 
dividual relation to the subject. If Christ was subject 
to human limitations, His sense of Sonship did not 
always completely reproduce the total reality of God’s 
Fatherhood toward Him. There were moments of 
depression as well as of exaltation. Without claiming 
that in the Last Discourse as given in the Fourth 
Gospel we have His tpsissima verba, yet that report 
justifies us in the conclusion that the earthly life was 
a separation from the Father relatively to the closer 
communion desired and anticipated when He returned 
to the Father. If the sense of Sonship did vary, if 
the communion was not always as confident and 
satisfying, we can understand that the depression 
might be so intensified that the certainty of nearness 
and dearness to God might waver, and even fail. 
And surely on the Cross there were the conditions 
for such an experience. There are limits to the 
content of human consciousness; the mind may be 
so absorbed in one impression, experience, effort, as 
to drive all competing interests into the subconscious- 
ness. When Jesus was undergoing the strain of 
temptation He did not feel the pangs of hunger (Matt. 
iv. 2). He forgot His bodily needs in the joy of giving 
the Living Water to a soul athirst (John iv. 32). 
When He was feeling with and for man what sin means, 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 207 


that apocalypse of iniquity obscured for Him the 
vision of God. On His Cross He was realising, not 
only because of the physical pain which man’s hate 
and cruelty were inflicting upon Him, but still more 
because of the manifold forms of human weakness 
and wickedness exposed to His searching gaze, the 
enormity of sin and the awful consequences it in- 
volves. Is it not intelligible that He felt Himself 
alone with that sin, and apart from God as Father ? 
It cannot be too strongly insisted, however, that God 
had not forsaken Him, although He felt forsaken, and 
that as soon as the overstrained emotion had found 
relief in words of Scripture (Matt. xxvii. 46) which 
were words of faith still, though out of the depths, He 
again realised that Presence, and in it found peace. 
(ii) More difficult than either of these questions 
is the last. If in Gethsemane Jesus Himself at first 
prayed that if it were possible the cup might pass 
from Him, and only, bowed in prayer before God, 
discovered that it could not pass (Matt. xxvi. 89 and 
42), it would be irreverent for us to assume that we 
can offer a logical demonstration which would satisfy 
those who bring only an inquiring intellect to the 
subject. Itis only to the submissive spirit, depending 
on God’s illumination, that there can come the cer- 
tainty that thus it must be. This condition does 
not, however, forbid any further inquiry ;* for it may 
be that for Christ Himself the experience could be 
all that God meant it to be only if the cup was ac- 
cepted in the obedience of love, and as a venture of 
faith and not merely an assent of the understanding, 
and that to the saved in communion with the living 
Lord may be disclosed a meaning in that sacrifice that 
the Saviour Himself, while enduring it, did not dis- 
cover, and could not discover if the sacrifice were to 
be complete. (a) It is not necessary to estimate the 
value of the theories discussed in a previous chapter. 
In this constructive statement such reference will be 
made as is necessary for the development of the argu- 
ment. We may begin with the discussion of the 
distinction made betweeen subjective theories, such 


208 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


as that of Abalard, and objective theories, such as 
Anselm’s—that is, theories in which the impression 
on man is the guiding thought, and theories in which 
the attempt is made to show how Christ’s death affects 
God. The writer is convinced that this is a false 
antithesis. There is such moral affinity and com- 
munity between God and man, that that Cross of 
Christ can impress man truly, rightly, worthily, only 
as it affects God. What the Cross means for God, 
or God means in the Cross, is the meaning and the 
sole meaning that man should find in it. As for- 
giveness is actualised as renewed fellowship between 
God and man only when there is repentance and faith, 
there must be a correspondence between the human 
conditions of receiving and the divine content which 
is received in forgiveness. In repentance man con- 
demns his own sin, and in so condemning morally 
annuls it, or, if that seem too strong a phrase, at least 
severs himself from it, so that it is no longer his act. 
Must there not have been in the Cross which conveys 
forgiveness also judgment on the sin that is forgiven, 
and God’s judgment ? Must not God disclose His 
mind concerning the world’s sin even as He unfolds 
His will concerning the sinner whom He forgives ? 
There might be an emotional reaction against sin as 
a result of the contemplation of the suffering which 
man’s wickedness imposed upon Christ; but the moral 
reaction which alone has value in repentance demands 
that it is God’s estimate of sin which is discovered in 
and conveyed by the Cross. 

(6) We may next assign the place which may be 
given in a constructive statement to the idea which 
M‘Leod Campbell has expounded. As has already 
been said, we cannot in strict propriety use the words 
repentance and confession of the Sinless. But we 
can say this, that not only does the Cross impress 
repentance on the sinner, but that the Cross expresses 
repentance and confession of sin typically, repre- 
sentatively, inasmuch as Christ so identified Himself 
with sinful mankind that He felt the sorrow and 
shame and curse of sin as His very own. In Him was 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 209 


the accusing and condemning conscience of the race 
concentrated. He bears the sins of the world upon 
His own heart. His agony and desolation show how 
great a burden the world’s sin ought to be to mankind. 

(c) But M‘Leod Campbell had to recognise that 
this confession was an assent to and approval of the 
divine condemnation of sin. The passage in which 
he states this view is of such crucial importance 
that it must be quoted in full; it states better than 
the writer himself could the very core of the whole 
matter: ‘That oneness of mind with the Father, 
which towards man took the form of condemnation 
of sin, would, in the Son’s dealing with the Father 
in relation to our sins, take the form of a perfect 
confession of our sins. This confession, as to its own 
nature, must have been a perfect Amen in humanity 
to the judgment of God on the sin of man. . . . Let us 
consider this Amen from the depths of the humanity 
of Christ to the divine condemnation of sm. What 
is it in relation to God’s wrath against sin? What 
place has it in Christ’s dealing with that wrath ? 
I answer: He who so responds to the divine wrath 
against sin, saying, “‘ Thou art righteous, O Lord, 
who judgest us,’ is necessarily receiving the full 
apprehension and realisation of that wrath, as well 
as of that sin against which it comes forth, into His 
soul and spirit, into the bosom of the divine humanity, 
and, so receiving it, He responds to it with a perfect 
response—a response from the depths of that divine 
humanity—and in thai perfect response He absorbs it. 
For that response has all the elements of a perfect 
repentance in humanity for all the sin of man—a 
perfect sorrow—a perfect contrition—all the elements 
of such a repentance, and that in absolute perfection, 
all,—excepting the personal consciousness of sin ;— 
and by that perfect response in Amen to the mind of 
God in relation to sin is the wrath of God rightly 
met, and that is accorded to divine justice which is its 
due and could alone satisfy it.’1 Again it must be 

1 The Nature of the Atonement, 5th ed., p. 116 ff., quoted in Denney’s 
op. cit. pp. 117-118. 

O 


210 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


repeated, but the misrepresentation of the evangelical 
position is so common that repetition seems necessary 
wherever misconception might arise: Christ is not 
punished instead of man; there is no quantitative 
equivalence between what He suffered and what man- 
kind would suffer if sin’s full curse fell upon it. 

(d) There is a moral order of the world which we 
believe expresses the holy love of God; which attaches 
consequences, physical, social, moral, and_ religious, 
to sin; which attaches death—so Jesus believed, and 
the common conscience confirms that belief—to sin 
as the crucial consequence. Jesus identified Himself 
with sinful mankind not only in sharing death with 
men, but, on behalf of mankind as its concentrated 
conscience, in approving, in submitting to it, as the 
judgment of sin. Even if, with Ritschl,' we reserve 
the term wrath for the final dealing of God with defiant 
and resistent sin despite all His grace can do, and do 
not use it as M‘Leod Campbell does in relation to 
the present order, even if we regard that moral order 
as not merely penal, but as disciplinary, reformatory, 
even redemptive in the divine intention, nevertheless 
we can regard Jesus’ submission to death as expressive 
of the divine condemnation of sin, and of the assent 
of the human conscience to this judgment as righteous. 
It expresses that judgment in and with the appeal of 
the holy love of God for man’s repentance and faith, 
and the assurance of the divine forgiveness. The 
love of God, which in Christ so cleaves to sinful man- 
kind as to share the consequences of man’s sin, makes 
such an appeal and offers such an assurance as is 
fitted as no other means could be conceived to be 
to overcome man’s distrust and disobedience, and so 
to bring him into that fellowship with God which 
grace offers fully and freely ; but it 1s so fitted because 
it no less expresses God’s judgment on the sin forgiven 
than assures that forgiveness. 

(e) The Cross expresses the divine judgment as it 
assures the divine forgiveness, and for moral com- 
pleteness the one is necessary to the other. God 

1 Justification and Reconciliation, Eng. trans., p. 323. 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 211 


does not merely pass over sin, treating *‘ mankind 
sinners’ with moral indifference, as though their sin 
were of no consequence to Him. He forgives sin— 
that is, He condemns it, and in condemning it shows 
_ the necessary moral reaction of His perfect character 
and purpose against it; and His holy love in forgive- 
ness separates the sinner from that condemnation, 
if he will by echoing the divine judgment separate 
himself from his sin. With God mercy does not 
merely temper justice, but grace so deals with sin 
that forgiveness absorbs (to use M‘Leod Campbell’s 
term) judgment. It is at this point of the argument 
that we may recognise what truth there is in the 
governmental theory. God as the Ruler of mankind, 
responsible for the maintenance and vindication of 
the moral order of the world, must command the 
respect of mankind for that moral order in the method 
of His forgiveness. 

(f) Such a forgiveness conjoined with judgment the 
Cross conveys to men—it does not procure it. It 
cannot be stated too definitely or emphatically that 
the Cross does not change God’s nature, disposition, 
purpose. God is eternally holy love. It is ever His 
purpose to redeem mankind from sin. The Lamb 
was slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. xiii. 
8). Righteousness and Mercy, Holiness and Love, 
Wrath and Grace, Judgment and Forgiveness, have 
often been represented as successive states or moods 
of God; but they are complementary, and necessarily 
complementary, aspects of the divine perfection. All 
this harmonising of conflicting attributes in God in 
which theology has often indulged is irreverent. 
What the Cross does is to present as harmonised what 
to imperfect human judgment appears conflicting. 
- This is not to minimise the significance of the Cross, 
for it is in the Cross that the eternal reality of God 
in His estimate and treatment of sin is finally and 
perfectly disclosed. ‘There is a change, a crisis in the 
moral and religious history of mankind in its relations 
to God. There is through the Cross revealed to and 
realised in man, as never before, what God eternally 


212 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


wills in His holy love—redemption from sin, recon- 
ciliation unto Himself. Can any moment in human 
history compare with that in which God in Christ is 
finally and perfectly revealed as Saviour, except that 
in which the Saviourhood shall gain the Sovereignty ? 

(g) Again, Christ does not propitiate God, but God 
sets forth Christ as propitiatory (Rom. ii. 25): in 
Christ He reveals and realises His goodwill to men. 
What has been previously said about the Incarnation 
as about the relation of Christ to God is necessary 
to an understanding of the Atonement. It is the 
God immanent in the whole evolution of nature and 
history, in personal unity with mankind in Christ, 
as God-man, God as man, who is reconciling the world 
unto Himself. What Christ did, God did in Him; 
what Christ suffered, God suffered in Him. To 
identify the Father with righteousness and the Son 
with grace, and then to represent the Son’s grace as 
prevailing over the Father’s righteousness, 1s pagan 
mythology and not Christian theology. The whole 
historical reality of Jesus Christ from the cradle to 
the Cross is the divine deed of revelation to and 
redemption of ‘ mankind sinners.’ 

(h) If the question be pressed, Why was it necessary 
that God should save man by such a sacrifice ?—to 
justify the interpretation of the sacrifice here offered 
the reason for the necessity must, however diffidently, 
be stated. That it was necessary to impress man 
is generally admitted. Does it express God, and was 
such an expression necessary to God? Conscious of 
the intellectual difficulties involved, the writer had 
searched his own conscience, and had reached the 
conviction which now many years of concern with the 
subject have confirmed, that it is a necessity of moral 
perfection to react on sin in condemnation, and to 
react in such a way as will adequately express what 
to this perfection sin is. Even a good man cannot 
be indifferent to sin: it must be repugnant to him. 
It may not be his duty to express that condemnation 
to others; but if he has any responsibility for the 
character and conduct of others, that obligation also 


CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 213 


follows. The moral order, purpose, and ideal centre 
in God: He cannot be acquiescent, silent, inactive, 
at sin’s challenge. That challenge must be met. 
Could any response of holy love be more adequate 
not only to meet the challenge before men, but to 
satisfy that holy love itself, than God’s own sacrifice 
in bearing in Christ’s Cross His own judgment on 
the world’s sin? All the divine judgments in human 
history pale before the splendour of that vision of 
the Judge and Ruler of mankind as Saviour. As one 
muses on this theme, the fire within burns ; argument 
must sink into silence, and adoration and gratitude 
alone can have voice. ‘ Thanks be unto God for His 
unspeakable gift.’ 

(8) Much as one might desire to close the interpreta- 
tion of the fact of Christ here, we must not see Him 
only on His Cross. It is because He lives that He 
saves to the uttermost all who come unto God through 
Him (Heb. vii. 25). What Christ has done for us has 
meaning and worth only from what He does in us. 
It is as with Him we die unto sin and live unto God 
that our repentance and faith as the conditions of 
our salvation grow to completeness. His atonement 
on the Cross can become a reality for us as by His 
Spirit we are being made a new creation, the old things 
having passed away and all things having become new. 
Belief in a plan of salvation or a theory of the Atone- 
ment becomes a moral and religious scandal apart 
from the life in the Spirit.” God’s forgiveness is not 
for man’s safety, comfort, ease, and happiness here 
or hereafter, but for his becoming perfect as the child 
of God even as the Father in heaven is perfect. This 
task of sanctification will be a grievous yoke and a 
heavy burden if it be attempted as the fulfilment of 
a law; the yoke is easy and the burden light only in 
personal dependence on, communion with, and sub- 
mission to the Living Lord ; it is by the contemplation 
of His glory that there can be any transformation into 
that glory (2 Cor. iii. 18).“ If that sounds too mystical 
for the ordinary Christian experience, a human ana- 
logy may help. In human relations example and 


214 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


influence are more potent morally than precept. 
Even if we do not vividly realise the presence and 
activity of Christ, yet to know by faith’s assurance 
that He is with us, and works in us by His Spirit, that 
His grace is sufficient for us (2 Cor. xn. 9), is a 
deliverance from weakness and an enduement with 
power. Weneed not discriminate between Christ 
and the Spirit (this subject belongs to the last section 
of this volume). It is God, Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit, who completes the revelation and redemption 
in the fact of Christ. God is more intimately immanent 
by His Spirit than in nature or history. He is complet- 
ing the evolution of the world and of mankind in 
the progressive manifestation of the sons of God. 
Every believer can to-day complete his own person- 
ality by receiving and responding to the communi- 
eativeness of God in His grace, even as the Son on 
earth knew, trusted, loved, and obeyed the Father 
in heaven. 


Te a a, 


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wy i, ; 


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OF GOD | 


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INTRODUCTORY 


(i) Tur Christian Church acknowledges Jesus as the 
Revealer of God as Father; through the grace of the 
Lord Jesus Christ the love of God is mediated. It 
has nevertheless allowed its theology to be injuriously 
affected by two influences—the imperfect conceptions 
of the Old Testament on the one hand, and the in- 
adequate apprehension of the revelation of Christ 
- even in parts of the New Testament on the other hand. 
Jesus came to fulfil law and prophecy (Matt. v. 17); 
but His fulfilment was not simply confirmation, but 
correction and completion, for He was the perfect 
consummation of the progressive revelation of God 
to the Hebrew nation. The contrasts of the old law 
and the new life in the Sermon on the Mount illustrate 
a principle of much wider applicability. What He 
said about God was also in contrast to what had been 
said of old times. Dominant as was the influence 
of Christ in His apostles, great as was the change 
wrought in them, yet even in Paul the Jewish Rabbi 
survives in the Christian apostle, and in his argu- 
ments with Judaisers he often remains partially in 
the Jewish standpoint, and does not pass completely 
to the Christian point of view. 

(ii) This has had very serious consequences, not for 
Christian theology and ethics alone, but even for 
religious experience and moral character. The atti- 
tude of many Christians has been that of the bondage 
of the law, and not that of the freedom of grace. An 
imperfect tribal morality has often determined the 
conduct of Christians rather than the perfect universal 
‘moral ideal of Christ. {As men think, so they live; 
\and as they live, sothey tins} God has often been 
conceived, not as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
but as the covenant god of a nomad people. If 

216 


JESUS AS REVEALER OF GOD 217 


Christianity is to hold the thought and rule the life 
of to-day, it is only Christ’s revelation of God, and 
what in prophet or apostle is consistent with it, which 
can be commended and defended by Christian theo- 
logy. Whether this volume succeeds in the attempt 
or not, the intention is, not to include anything that 
any part of the Bible may assert about God unless it 
accords with the mind of Christ; and not to exclude 
inferences about the nature and purpose of God for 
which no statement of the Scriptures may be quoted, 
so long as they follow logically from a courageous 
and consistent development of the teaching of Jesus 
about the Father. 

(iii) We must not, however, assume that Jesus 
believed about God as Father only what He explicitly 


stated. He stood in the prophetic succession, and ~ 


the ‘ ethical monotheism ’ of the prophets is the back- 
eround of His distinctive revelation of God as Father. 
That inestimable gain of the moral and réligious 
development of His people He did not throw away ; 
but in it He lived His own inner life with God. This 
at the present moment needs some emphasis, as there 
has been a tendency to isolate the teaching of Jesus 
from its presuppositions, and so to give what must 
be regarded as a one-sided representation. Like 
every great teacher, He emphasised what was being 
forgotten or neglected in the truth of the past as well 
as the truth which was His distinctive message. One 
may have a great deal of sympathy with the pacifist 
position, and hold that the Christian Church should 
take up a very different attitude to war from what 
it has generally held, and yet be forced to the con- 
clusion that the pacifist teaching ignores much that 
is of permanent value in the prophetic teaching about 
the divine providence, and the judgment of sin by 
God in human history. 

(iv) We must not further assume that the apostles 
are not interpreting the Christian revelation when 
they make statements about God’s attitude to and 
dealing with sin for which no explicit warrant can 
be found in the teaching of Jesus, Much of the 


r- 


218 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


apostolic teaching is interpretation of the Cross of 
Christ; and although there are, as we have seen, 
words of Jesus bearing on His death, yet the teach- 
ing could not be complete, for three reasons. First of 
all, had Jesus Himself understood all, the necessary 
experience of His sacrifice would not have been 
possible to Him, for here He had to walk by faith 
and not by sight, trusting and obeying the Father’s 
will when He did not fully understand it. In Geth- 
semane He prayed that, if it were possible, the cup 
might pass from Him (Matt. xxvi. 39), and on Calvary 
He asked, ‘ Why hast Thou forsaken Me ? ’ (xxvii. 46). 
Secondly, the disciples were so opposed even to the 
thought of His death, that they were neither willing 
nor able to receive all the teaching that their Master 
might have given them. Observe how summary are 
the reports of the announcements of the Passion. 
Thirdly, it was only after the sacrifice had been 
endured, and its effects experienced as saving grace, 
that the saved could understand from their own 
standpoint as well as that of the Saviour all that 
the sacrifice might mean. To dismiss the teaching 
of Paul, grounded in experience, on the atonement 
in Christ’s blood, because there is no mention of 
atonement in the parable of the Prodigal Son, is 
entirely unreasonable. Assuredly no doctrine of the 
Atonement can claim to be Christian which offers a 
representation of God inconsistent with what that 
parable teaches about God’s attitude to sinners. 
But, as the companion parables which Luke (xv. 1-10) 
has put in front of that parable show, it does not give 
the complete account of God’s action for the salva- 
tion of men. 

(v) It would certainly be easier to take one or other 
of two courses different from that here adopted. 
Hither we might from the standpoint of Biblical 
literalism try to combine in our conception of God 
whatever statements on the subject may claim 
Scripture warrant. This is the dogmatic method of 
the past which, as has already been indicated, has 
had so disastrous an influence on Christian thought 


JESUS AS REVEALER OF GOD 219 


and life, and which still promotes, happily in very 
restricted circles, an uncharitableness and censorious- 
ness which are lamentable. These, despite all that 
modern knowledge has taught us, ‘still hold by the 
old position, imagining that by so doing they are 
proving themselves the defenders of the faith, whereas 
in truth they are making faith to some almost im- 
possible. Or we might follow the easy path of a 
theological modernism which confines itself almost 
entirely to the teaching of Jesus, and even in that 
teaching finds much uncongenial to the modern mind, 
as these exponents regard it. Reason has been shown 
why we should not confine ourselves to the teaching 
of Jesus; and in judging that teaching it is well 
for us to remember that our age too has its prejudices 
and limitations, and that it would be an irretrievable 
loss if we cut down the permanent and universal 
revelation of God in Christ to the restricted measure 
of rationality which much of this modernism alone 
would leave to us. Some of these modern tendencies 
need the correction of ‘ the truth as it is in Jesus,’ 
and cannot be accepted as fixing the standard of 
judgement for His authoritative message for our day. 
To keep a straight and steady course between that 
Sceylla of literalism and this Charybdis of modernism 
demands an insight into the mind of Christ which 
learning alone cannot give, but which comes in 
communion with the Living Lord in dependence on 
His Spirit. It is thus, and thus alone, that one can 
dare to approach this perilous enterprise. 


CHAPTER I 
THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 


WE must first of all endeavour to set forth simply 
and clearly the conception of God given by Christ 
in deed as well as in word, and then consider some 
difficulties for our thought that the acceptance of 
that conception involves. 


i 


(1) Christian theology has from its beginnings been 
hampered as well as helped by philosophy; philo- 
sophical assumptions about the nature of God have 
sometimes stood in the way of an acceptance of the 
revelation of God in Christ and all that it involves ; 
and we cannot go far in the exposition of Christ’s 
conception without encountering some of these 
hindrances. It is the writer’s intention in another 
volume to deal with the philosophical vindication 
of the religious belief in God, or the harmonising with 
the other products of the thought of man of the dis- 
tinctive contribution of religion. Here these matters 
will be referred to only in so far as may be necessary 
for the immediate purpose. It is the assumption of 
the Old Testament that God is personal, thinking 
mind, feeling heart, and acting will. Jesus in know- 
ing God as Father and Himself as Son assumed such 
affinity of nature and community of relation between 
God and man as can be described as personal; and 
consequently the God He knew and made known 
must be conceived as personal. Whatever other and 
more than man God may be, for such relation to man 
He must be thought of as personal. The terms Jesus 


used in regard to God and Himself, Father and Son, 
220 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 221 


while affirming both affinity of nature and community 
of relation, were a confession of a difference within this 
unity, the dependence of the Son upon the Father, 
the subordination of the Son to the Father. In the 
passage (Matt. x1. 25-27, Luke x. 21-22) in which the 
unique relation to God is claimed, entire dependence 
(° All things have been delivered unto Me of My 
Father’) and complete submission (v. 26) are ex- 
pressed. When He asked the young ruler, *‘ Why 
callest thou Me good? none is good save one, even 
God’ (Mark x. 18), or assured the disciples, ‘ The 
Father is greater than I’ (John xiv. 28), He recognised 
limitations in Himself that He did not assign to God. 
‘Entirely in accord with this teaching, then, is Lotze’s 
position, already referred to in the previous section, 
that God alone is perfect personality, and that man 
is progressively personal. The Incarnate Son was 
truly man. That God is personal is an affirmation 
which we may make on the authority of Christ. 

(2) To such an assertion the objection is offered that 
the divine attributes of infinitude and absoluteness 
are incompatible with the necessary limitations and 
relations of personality. This objection has already 
been dealt with in the discussion on personality in 
God and man. What here remains to be added is 
that, while Jesus thought of God as personal, He, - 
without using philosophical terms, thought of God 
in a way which would involve both these ideas. God 
was for Him not merely the process in nature and 
history, but always the power over nature and history. 
While He was ever conscious that He dwelt in God 
and God in Him, His attitude, already noted, of 
dependence on, submission to, and confidence in 
God showed that for Him God was above and beyond 
as well as within. To use the language of philosophy, 
God for Him was no less transcendent than immanent. 
These abstract conceptions He clothed with concrete 
reality. For Him there was no long series of second- 
ary causes removing to a distance God as First Cause. 
As He Himself lived in the immediate presence of 
God, so He saw God feeding the birds of the air and 


222 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


clothing the flowers of the field (Matt. vi. 26-30), nay, 
even taking count of every sparrow and every hair 
of the head of man (x. 29-30). For Him there was 
no order of nature, apart from God, mediating and 
limiting the activity of God. He did not distinguish 
the natural and the supernatural, since for Him there 
was always and everywhere the one activity of God, 
as in the sunshine and the shower (v. 45); and He 
set no bounds to what God would do. For His faith 
with God all things are possible (xix. 26). It is only 
man’s unbelief which hinders a more wonderful work- 
ing of God in man and for man. In dealing with the 
miracles of Jesus in a-previous chapter, this matter 
has been already more fully discussed. When we 
come to discuss the relation of God to nature the 
difference of natural and supernatural will be con- 
sidered. Meanwhile, only two considerations need to 
be emphasised : (1) Jesus was expressing the religious 
consciousness in its simplicity and intensity, and not 
formulating any philosophical theory ; and neverthe- 
less (2) the testimony of His religious consciousness 
is a datum to which justice must be done in framing 
any philosophical theory. The immediacy of the 
divine presence and activity which the religious 
consciousness affirms must be fully taken account of 
in any conception offered of the relation of God to 
nature for which the authority of Christ can be 
claimed. 

“(8) To apply to the teaching of Jesus another 
distinction familiar to the thought of to-day, we may 
ascribe to Him a dynamic and not a static view of 
God. It was not the divine nature but the divine 
purpose with which He was concerned. * My Father 
worketh even until now, and I work’ (John v. 17). 
In His ministry He was an agent of that purpose. 
He assumed what all His countrymen assumed, that 
God had been active in the history of the nation ; 
and with them He was expecting a still more manifest 
activity of God in the coming of the kingdom of 
God, or the kingdom of heaven. So extensive has 
been the discussion among scholars as to the meaning 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 223 


of this term on the lips of Jesus, that it would be 
quite impossible to reproduce any part of it here. 
The conclusions which have resulted from a study of 
the relevant literature as well as of the evidence in 
the Gospels must be briefly stated. For Jesus the 
kingdom had a twofold aspect : it was already present 
in Himself and those who attached themselves to 
Him as an expansive, pervasive, illuminating, and 
preserving influence in the world; it was mustard- 
seed and leaven (Matt. xii. 31-33), light and salt 
(v. 13-16). It was coming in the fullness of its power, 
glory, and blessing by an act of divine intervention 
in human history in connection with His return to 
the world from which He was soon withdrawing His 
visible and audible presence (Matt. xvi. 28, xxiv.). 
But divine omnipotence could not inaugurate the 
kingdom apart from human penitence and faith, and 
yet the kingdom would not be consummated by any 
merely human historical process. The mind of Jesus 
Himself seems to have wavered between confidence 
in the sufficiency of the Father’s power, and de- 
spondency due to the hindrance offered by human 
sin and unbelief. The subject has already been more 
fully discussed in the previous section, but must be 
here as briefly as possible recalled. 

(4) We do not and we cannot confess our hope 
to-day in exactly the same terms as did Jesus and 
His contemporaries. How far His language was an 
accommodation to the understanding of His age, and 
imperfectly expressed His own convictions, we cannot 
confidently assert. But inasmuch as in His revelation 
of the Father He rose so far above the thought of 
His time, may we not at least conjecture that the 
apocalyptic language of His contemporaries but im- 
perfectly expressed His inmost meaning, and that 
that is to be found not in hopes which history has 
left unfulfilled, but rather in the ideals of which history 
is offering us the evidence of a realisation? We must 
judge what is obscure by what is distinct in His words. 
His conception of God as Father is our guide to the 
character of the purpose of God in history. Under 


294 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


such guidance Christian thinkers have been led to 
the conclusion which may be briefly summarised in 
the words that the kingdom of God is both the good 
God offers and the duty He lays upon man, the 
sovereignty of His grace in all mankind and the 
obedience of the children of God to the law of love. 
In the last section of this volume the subject will be 
further considered in dealing with the Christian hope, 
and the writer projects another volume on ‘The 
Kingdom of God as the Christian Ideal,’ in which He 
will fully discuss the subject of Christian ethics, 
individual and social. Meanwhile, the conviction that 
this teaching of Jesus leaves with us is that God is 
working in history, not apart from but with and by 
man for the fulfilment of His purpose; that human 
progress is assured not by what man is and does, 
but only by what He will suffer God to do in and with 
Him; that so intimately and inseparably 1s Christ 
related to that purpose that the fulfilment of the 
purpose will be the vindication and triumph of Christ 
Himself; and that the rapidity with which the kingdom 
may come is not to be measured by the capacity of 
man to bring about its coming, but rather by the 
receptivity and responsiveness of the faith of man to 
the grace of God which will give Him the opportunity 
of Himself completing His own purpose. 

(5) As has already been indicated, Jesus assumed 
“the prophetic teaching about God, and we must accept 
that on His authority so far as it is consistent with 
His revelation of the Father. If we give due heed to 
the whole of His teaching, we shall find that more of 
the apostolic teaching is in accord with that revelation 
than a superficial view of the Fatherhood might lead 
us to suppose. God is true, wise, faithful, righteous, 
holy, good, merciful, and gracious. The teaching of 
Jesus is not without the terror of the Lord as well as 
the tenderness. Only a few instances need be given. 
For those who cause little ones to stumble there is 
Gehenna, the unquenchable fire (Mark ix. 42-48). 
The wicked husbandmen are to be destroyed (xu. 9). 
The unfaithful servant is to be cut asunder and have 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 225 


his portion with the hypocrites (Matt. xxiv. 51). 
Those who did not do good to the least of His brethren 
are bidden depart into ‘the eternal fire which is 
prepared for the devil and his angels’ (xxv. 41). 
There is a sin which never has forgiveness, for it is 
‘an eternal sin’ (Mark in. 29). While much of the 
language is figurative, and we must not interpret 
eternal as necessarily meaning everlasting, there can 
be no doubt that Jesus does teach a righteous judg- 
ment of God in His providence in the present life as 
well as in His dealing with men in the hereafter. He 
does not so separate God from or exalt God above 
the moral order in the world as to justify our regard- 
ing the consequences of sin as natural and inevitable 
apart from His will: for Jesus the will of God was 
ultimate and supreme. If, however, we do admit that 
Jesus did regard these consequences of sin as willed 
by God, it does not follow that this teaching is in- 
consistent with the teaching of the Fatherhood. The 
holy love of God seeks to reproduce the character of 
God Himself in man, and uses many means, righteous 
judgment as well as forgiving mercy. As has already 
been shown in a previous chapter in dealing with the 
work of Christ, the Cross is a revelation of judgment 
as well as of mercy. The love of God in Christ suffers 
with and for man in the grace which conjoins the 
condemnation of sin and the forgiveness of the sinner. 
The discussion in that chapter must now be recalled ; 
and the conclusions there reached must be included 
in the conception of God for which the authority of 
the Son in revealing the Father may be claimed. We 
may now, however, concentrate on what is distinctive 
in the teaching of Jesus—the Fatherhood of God. 


{I 


(1) Jesus claimed that He as Son was known by the 
Father alone, and that He alone knew the Father 
and could make the Father known (Matt. xi. 27, 
Luke x. 22). He thus distinguishes His relation to 
God from that of other men. His is an immediate 

I 


226 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


relation, that of other men is mediated by Him. 
According to the Fourth Gospel, He gives to those 
who believe on His name the right to become children 
of God (John i. 12). He is Son by an eternal relation, 
men become sons by a temporal experience.t But 
apart from this difference, which has already been 
dealt with in the discussion of the person of Christ, 
He did offer to men the same privileges and blessings 
of the Divine Fatherhood as He used and enjoyed. 
There seems to be no doubt that Jesus taught a 
permanent and universal Fatherhood of God. God, 
whose nature and purpose do not change, is eternally 
and infinitely Father, and His Fatherhood is the 
motive of Creation and Providence as well as Re- 
demption. God made man, and cares for him as the 
object of His eternal and infinite love. God does not 
become Father only to those who repent and believe, 
as some writers have asserted as a logical inference 
from the parallelism of the relation of God to man 
and of man to God. But such an exact parallelism 
cannot be insisted on when we are concerned with the 
eternal God and man made in time.?. The Fatherhood 
of God does not involve the actual, only the potential 
sonship of all men at birth. Men are not sons of God 
by nature, but become sons by grace. The relation 
is not a physical one, but a spiritual, although it does 
rest on the relation of God as Creator to man as His 
creature, made with the promise of and the capacity 
for such a higher relation. As a moral and religious 
relation it has to be realised personally by each man. 
Even apart from sin, by the very character of this 
sonship each man needs to become a son, receiving 
and responding to the Fatherhood of God. It shows 
a lack of moral insight and spiritual discernment to 
affirm that because God is eternally and infinitely 
Father in His grace, all men are by nature sons of 
God. God loves and cares for all, and is ever willing 
—nay, eager—that all should so become sons as in 


1 Here difference of sex is irrelevant, and therefore the term ‘ son’ is used 
to maintain the analogy with ‘ the Son.’ 
2 See Our.Growing Creed, by W. D. M‘Laren, pp. 379-80. 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 227 


experience to realise all that His Fatherhood wills for 
their good. The prodigal in the far country was not 
morally and religiously any longer son; the physical 
fact remained, but the spiritual relation was for the time 
suspended, and could be restored only by his return 
home. If Jesus does not explicitly make this dis- 
tinction, it is implicit in His conception of Fatherhood 
as a spiritual and not a physical relation, and as, 
therefore, a relation which, while perfect on God’s 
side, must on man’s be realised in the process of moral 
and religious development. Paul is not contradicting 
the teaching of Jesus in his doctrine of adoption 
(Rom. viii. 15), or John in what he writes about. be- 
coming the sons of God (John i. 12). 

(2) God’s Fatherhood is His relation with man as 
constituted by His love. While Jesus does not give 
us a definition of the love of God, He gives us the data 
for a description of its elements. It is a mistake in 
psychology to regard love as only emotion or senti- 
ment, as belonging only to the affective aspect of 
human personality. It is this error which has led 
some theologians astray into contrasting God’s love 
with His holiness or righteousness, into assuming that 
God’s Fatherhood needs qualification by various epi- 
thets, and that, so unqualified, the truth is a danger- 
ous doctrine. If we conceive love aright, we need 
not fear to declare that love alone. For in love it is 
the whole personality—thought, feeling, will—which 
is directed towards another, giving itself that it may 
find itself in another. It is self-communication for 
self-realisation in and with another. Love as thought ~ 
is a judgment of value, as feeling a sense of interest, 
as will a purpose of good. That God in Christ reveals 
Himself as Father sets an estimate on man in corre- 
spondence with the value of God Himself. Great as 
is the difference between God and man, this relation- 
ship exalts man above mere creaturehood. Jesus’ 
teaching on man as lost lays the stress not on what 
man. loses by his sin, but on the loss God feels when 
man is estranged from Him; and every man has this 
value for God. The necessary inference from the 


298 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Fatherhood of God is the infinite value to God of 
every man as potential son. Because man has such 
value to God, God has an interest in man. The 
etymology of the word (Latin interesse, to be among) 
may help our thought. God is so much mixed up 
with men (if such a phrase may be forgiven as best 
conveying the meaning), so identified with man, that 
- He has both pain and pleasure in and with man. He 
is grieved by man’s sin, and made glad by his recovery. | 
God is not impassible, and to affirm that He is passible 
is not the monstrous heresy that the Creed of Chalee- 
don represents it as being. God can and does feel 
with and for man. As-God sets on man such a value, 
and has in man such an interest, He wills for man a 
corresponding good, that man shall become so worthy 
of his worth that God will have joy and not grief in 
Him. What that good is, the term Fatherhood itself 
indicates. This analysis of the love of God is based 
solidly on the exposition of the parables in Luke xv., 
and in no particular or degree goes beyond what is 
there taught. 
(3) God’s Fatherhood is His communicatwe and 
“ reproductive perfection. God as Father wills that men 
should live in fellowship with Himself, and grow in 
likeness to Himself. God made man in His image, ~ 
not as actuality, but as promise and potency. Son- 
ship consists of communion with and conformity to 
God—likeness which comes from loving. Communion 
is not the reward but the source of conformity. Man 
is perfected by faith, and not by works. It is aS men 
love God as Father that they as sons become like God. 
Christian morality depends on Christian religion. We 
love God because He first loved us, and as we love 
God we come to love our fellow-men as also loved of 
God (1 John iv. 19-21), and love is the fulfilling of 
the law (Rom. xiii. 10). It is as God is known and 
loved as Father that His will is freely willed, not by 
the compulsion of law, but by the constraint of love. 
Even in the life of Jesus there were times of temptation 
and trial, when obedience was a struggle and a sorrow; 
but for the most part He gives the impression of a 





; 


ee ee a ee ne - 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 229 


spontaneous goodness, a likeness to His Father which 
freely came from His fellowship with the Father. 
As God’s love is holy and imparts holiness, the anti- 
thesis of holiness and love is theological rhetoric, and 
not moral and religious reality. 

(4) So far we have been describing God’s Fatherhood 
towards men without taking account of man’s sin- 
fulness, although some reference has been unavoidable. 
In dealing with sinful man God’s love shows itself 
as grace, for grace is love which will not be overcome 
by unworthiness, but seeks to recover and restore the 
worth of the unworthy. As God deals with man’s 
sinfulness decisively in Jesus Christ, we may say, as 
is implied in the apostolic benediction, that God’s love 
shows itself and works as the grace of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. To what has already been said about that 
grace in the first section of this volume, something 
remains to be added here. (a) The simple but great 
word for God’s dealing with sin is forgiveness. While 
for the object he had in view, and the opponents he 
had to meet, Paul truly and rightly used the phrases 
* the righteousness of God,’ or ‘ justification by faith,’ 
and even we to-day cannot leave out of consideration 
the relation of love to law, mercy to judgment, yet it 
has been a loss that Christian theology has not con- 
fined itself more to the use of the word forgiveness, 
which goes right home to the heart. While God does 
not and cannot deceive Himself as to the condition 
of men, yet His holy love wills so to distinguish and 
separate the sin which He condemns from the sinners 
whom as lost sons He loves, as to offer to them the 
restoration of the personal relation to Himself which 
they have interrupted by their distrust and disobedi- 
ence, if only they will in penitence and faith accept 
His judgment of condemnation on that sin and His 
judgment of favour on themselves. It does seem an 
inexact use of language to speak of the forgiveness 
_of sin, for sin is ever under God’s judgment. It is 
sinners who are forgiven, because their sin is no longer 
reckoned unto them, and they themselves have dis- 
owned it. It is not a theological subtlety to dis- 


230 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


tinguish between hatred of an act and hatred of the 
actor. Were the actor so exhausted in, so identified 
with his act that no distinction and separation were 
possible, then assuredly he must be condemned with 
his sin. It is surely such a condition which Jesus calls 
the unpardonable sin (Mark iii. 29). As long as the 
man is not lost in the sin, and can disown the sin, 
he can be forgiven his sin—it need no longer be put 
to his account. The unworthiness which sin_has 
brought on a man does not exhaust his worth. That 
worth God recognises, and in forgiveness He deals 
with man according to that worth, despite that 
unworthiness. In His-dealing God does not wait till 
man confesses his unworthiness and seeks to re@over 
his worth, He does not wait for penitence and faith, 
but by the offer and even pleading of His grace He 
evokes the penitence and faith without which for- 
giveness as the fully restored personal relationship 
cannot be actualised. God’s forgiveness is a creative 
act of God, by which He makes in man the conditions 
of its full realisation. 

(b) A forgiveness which followed on penitence and 
faith was expected by the Psalmist (li. 17). That 
falls within the Old Testament revelation. What is 
new in the revelation of God in Christ is that God 
Himself takes the initiative, and this is an initiative 
of such a kind as will so secure man’s reception of 1t 
and response to it as fully to maintain the holy love 
of God in its condemnation of sin, and to satisfy the 
conscience of man that sin deserves condemnation. 
The forgiveness in Christ is no passing over of sins in 
divine forbearance (Rom. iii. 25), leaving in doubt 
His attitude to sin. It is forgiveness, which means 
the restoration of the personal relation to God in 
accordance with the personal perfection which God 
ever is, and which in that relation is again to be a 
possibility for man. There is no contrast and con- 
tradiction, as thinkers more shallow morally and 
religiously than intellectually often affirm, between 
the truth of the Fatherhood of God and the doctrine 
of the Atonement. The Fatherhood is revealed in 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 231 


Christ’s Cross as the holy love which imparts itself _ 
both as holy and as love to sinful man in a forgiveness 
which judges the sin which the man is forgiven. God 
shows Himself most and best as Father in the gift 
of His Son in sacrifice for man’s salvation. 

(c) As Father, God wills the salvation of all men. 
God does all His holy love can do in Christ to seek and to 
save the lost, whether in this life or another, for we 
have no right to affirm that death ends the dealings 
of His grace with any. We dare not, however, affirm 
that all will be saved. As has already been suggested, 
the sinner may so identify himself with his sin that 
forgiveness will be impossible. That God should 
remit penalties even for the impenitent is conceivable ; 
but that God should forgive—that is, restore to full 
personal relationship to Himself—those who continue 
distrusting or disobeying Him is a moral and religious 
impossibility. To invoke God’s omnipotence is an 
irrelevance, even an impertinence. That God may 
have resources of appeal and persuasion in reserve 
which at last will prevail we dare not affirm, for Chris- 
tian faith must ask, What more can even God do than 
He has done in Jesus Christ ? We dare to believe 
and hope, however, that men may in another life 
apprehend, appreciate, and accept the truth and the 
erace of the Lord Jesus Christ as they may not have 
been able to do in this life. But we must admit the 
possibility that some may remain impenitent and 
unbelieving despite all God has done, or will yet do. 
Whether many, or even any, shall commit the un- 
pardonable sin of rejecting God’s every appeal we 
know not; but even with those, if such there should 
be, we may be confident that God will deal according 
to His love. It may be that as human personality 
has been created for sonship, for fellowship with and 
likeness to God as Father, he who refuses to become 
that for which he was created shall by a process of 
moral, mental, and spiritual deterioration at last lose 
that personality the ideal of which he has refused 
to realise. As human personality has emerged out 
of animal consciousness and vital organism, so it is 


232 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


conceivable that it may again relapse to a lower 
phase of reality, and at last even pass out of existence. 
This conjecture will need to be considered more fully 
in a subsequent chapter dealing with man’s destiny. 
It is here mentioned only as bearing on the permanence 
of God’s Fatherhood as holy love towards all men. 


iil 


(1) To this conception of God as Father there are 


several objections which can be urged. The attract- 


iveness of such a conception will be generally conceded; 
but to some thinkers it seems to be too good to be true. 
They would believe if they could; but the facts of 
the world and of life appear to some, as these facts 
are seen to and are understood by them, to make such 
a faith impossible. Others there are to whom even 
the teaching of Scripture presents an obstacle. How 
can this difficulty be removed ? 

(i) Jesus taught as one having authority, and not 
as the scribes (Mark i. 22); and many believers have 
so realised that authority in reason and conscience 
alike, that they have not felt anything else necessary 
to commend the truth to them. The writer of this 
volume must confess that Jesus Christ makes such 
an impression on him, not only of subjective con- 
fidence, but even of objective certainty, that where 
Christ affirms he cannot doubt. Were the difficulties 
of faith even greater than they are, he feels that Christ 
would Himself overcome them by the assurance that 
His personality inspires. And there are moments 
when the mind is so perplexed, that it is on Christ, 
and Christ alone, the soul must fall back as its only 
refuge. 

(ii) While the venture of faith must be made when 
the resources of reason fail, yet the reason may rein- 
force faith. The mind has a right to have its questions 
answered, as the heart to have its needs met. We 
must, therefore, deal with the objections to the con- 
ception of God’s Fatherhood, so far as our reason can. 
Two of these objections must be here mentioned— 





THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 233 


the comparative insignificance of man in the Universe, 
and the reality of pain and sin, although the full 
treatment of those subjects must be reserved for a 
more appropriate context in subsequent chapters. 
(a) As to the first, all that need here be said is that 
the objection, if it is valid, must receive a general 
application as challenging equally the truth of science 
and philosophy, morals and religion. Man’s insig- 
nificance must depreciate the value of all his activities, 
and not only this one conception. In dealing with 
man’s place in the Universe an argument will be offered 
to show how significant man is, not only as the final 
product of the evolution of the Universe, but as the 
subject who knows and understands the Universe 
and his own place in it, and who in his ideals rises to 
a reality above the actuality of the Universe. 

(6b) As to the second objection, the proper place for 
dealing with the problem of evil is when the relation 
of God to nature and man is under discussion; but 
here an evasion of the difficulty must be considered. 
The Apostles’ Creed affirms the belief in God the 
Father Almighty. Some thinkers, J. S. Mill for 
instance,! maintain that this assertion involves a 
dilemma. Either God is not altogether good, or He 
is not almighty. Hither the Fatherhood must be 
sacrificed to the Almightiness, or vice versa. And the 
argument by which this conclusion is sustained is as 
follows: As good, God wills and cannot but will 
good only; were He also almighty, He would prevent 
all evil. As the evil is not being prevented, God 
cannot be almighty as well as good. If as almighty 
He could prevent evil and did not, He would not be 
good. Either the goodness or the almightiness of 
God must be surrendered. The almightiness is re- 


1 This is Mill’s conclusion regarding the nature of God from the facts of 
the world as he estimates them: ‘ A Being of great but limited power, how 
or by what limited we cannot even conjecture; of great and perhaps un- 
limited intelligence, but perhaps also more narrowly limited than His power ; 
who desires and pays some regard to the happiness of His creatures, but who 
seems to have other motives of action which He cares more for, and who can 
hardly be supposed to have created the universe for that purpose alone.’ 
(Three Essays on Religion, p. 194.) 


234 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


jected, and the goodness retained. We must resolve 
the problem into two questions: What do we mean 
by almightiness ? What do we mean by all-goodness ? 
For this argument involves an unproved assumption 
regarding each; and by correcting the error in each 
case we may get such a conception of these two 
attributes of God as to be able to show that the 
existence of evil does not involve their opposition. 

(2) Many misunderstandings have arisen in theology 
because the loose popular use of terms has been 
accepted, instead of the endeavour being made to 
define the meaning exactly; and we may, therefore, 
be enabled to resolve.a problem by means of more 
exact definitions. 

(i) Almightiness does not mean that God can do 
anything or everything that we can imagine, con- 
ceive, or desire that He should do. God Himself is 
not an indefinite, undetermined potency of anything 
and everything. We may frankly accept Spinoza’s 
principle—Omynis determinatio est negatio ; but instead 
of avoiding determination to escape negation we must 
be ready to affirm what God is, even if that excludes 
a multitude of possibilities for speculative thought. 
God has a nature, a character, and a purpose, and He 
gives to the reality He creates a definite and deter- 
mined actuality, and not an unlimited possibility. 
Even the potency of the evolution of the Universe 
and the promise of progress of man are within limits 
of possibility appointed by God, not arbitrarily, but 
in accordance with what He is and, therefore, wills. 
Our thought would be plunged in confusion if we could 
imagine that A could be both A and not-A, that two 
and two could be five, that hatred could be better 
than love by the mere fact of the divine omnipotence. 
There are necessities and limitations in the creative 
reality and the created actuality which we must fully 
recognise. God can do only what can be done. 
Further, He can act only in accordance with His own 
perfection. There are impossibilities for wisdom, 
holiness, and love which reason and conscience in 
interpreting the Universe must recognise. All that 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 235 


we must insist on in opposition to the conception of a 
limited God, such as Mr. Wells offers us in God the 
Invisible King, are these two considerations which 
are involved in the attributes of God’s infinitude and 
absoluteness. First, there is no fate or force external 
to or different from God Himself which determines 
what God can and God cannot do. God is self- 
limited, for it is by His will that any actuality other 
than Himself is created by which His action could 
in any way be conditioned. Secondly, God has in 
Himself all the resources by the use of which in 
accordance with His own perfection He can fulfil 
His own purpose, for the fact that He has willed to 
create is a guarantee that what He has begun He can 
bring to an end harmonious with His own perfection. 
Surely the Universe displays such power that it 1s 
unreasonable to assume that the power will not avail 
to finish what has once been begun, and reasonable 
to believe that the perfecting of His work is not beyond 
the resources of Him who has carried that work so 
far. Still more do God’s wisdom and goodness 
give the assurance that what God has promised. He 
can perform. These convictions are essential to the 
confidence and courage of faith, for a God who had 
to contend against a fate or force beyond His control, 
and who could not fulfil His purpose, would not give 
to man the certainty and the security that he needs 
and finds in faith that all will be well with the world 
because God is in His heaven. A God who needs our 
help cannot give us the help we need, although He 
wills to fulfil His purpose with us as His fellow-workers. 
With these explanations of what 1s meant by God’s 
almightiness, the problem we are considering resolves 
itself into this: Is God’s action, conditioned as it is, 
contrary to or consistent with goodness ? 

(1) If God’s goodness means the pleasure or even 
the happiness of all His creatures, that and that alone, 
then it must be conceded that the facts of life do 
challenge faith in God’s Fatherhood. But if these 
same facts themselves point to a larger purpose, then 
we may conclude that the challenge can be met. We 


236 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


must neither minimise nor exaggerate the amount 
or the intensity of the evil in the world. We cannot 
be either optimists, affirming that this 7s the best of 
all possible worlds, or pessimists, deploring that this 
is the worst of all possible worlds; we may be 
meliorists, admitting that the world is partly bad, but 
believing that it is becoming better, and hoping that 
at last it will become the best. A closer scrutiny of 
all the relevant facts leading to such a solution of the 
problem must meanwhile be reserved ; but the Chris- 
tian conception of God’s Fatherhood as His com- 
municative and reproductive perfection, His purpose 
to restore man to His own fellowship and likeness, 
answers the question as to what God’s purpose is, 
and we must judge the world not as it meets our 
wishes, or furthers our ends, but as it is fitted to 
make men sons of God. If it can be shown, as will be 
shown in the fully-developed argument in a subse- 
quent chapter, that the world can be so interpreted, 
then we may conclude that only on an inadequate 
conception both of God’s almightiness and God’s 
goodness are we confronted with the dilemma that 
God is either all good or almighty, but that He cannot 
be both, since there is evil (pain and sin) in the world. 

(3), What may seem a very much more serious 
difficulty for many minds is the doctrine of God 
which has been dominant in the Christian Church, 
and which is specially associated with the names of 
Augustine and Calvin, but has also support in texts 
of the Holy Scriptures and the teaching of Paul 
especially. The writer of this volume must quite 
frankly confess that, trained though he was in the 
tenets of a strict Calvinism, not only the study and 
thought of many years, but still more his own ex- 
perience of the love of God in the grace of the Lord 
Jesus Christ by the dwelling and working in him of 
God’s Holy Spirit, has led him to a theology radically 
opposed to Calvinism, but based on a broader and 
firmer foundation than the biblical scholarship of the 
day afforded to Arminianism. ‘The contrast between 
the position here reached and Calvinism may be stated 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 237 


in this way. Calvinism started from the divine nature 
and attributes, speculatively construed on often a 
very slender basis of Scripture proof, using such texts 
as gave support to its contentions, and ignoring such 
teaching as would have modified its conclusions, while 
maintaining the supreme authority and the sole 
sufficiency for doctrine of the whole Bible. What 
is here being attempted is an interpretation of the 
character and the purpose of God, as disclosed in the 
progressive revelation consummated in Christ, not 
for the ends of speculative completeness and con- 
sistency, but for the solution of the moral and religious 
problems of human experience and history. 
_~ (1) We must do justice to the older view. While it 
is a speculative contention that God must be absolute 
will, foreseeing all, foreordaining all, directing and 
controlling all, it must be admitted that there are 
texts of Scripture which can be quoted in its support ; 
and we must add that it is a view that man by his 
reverence for God, his sense of insufficiency in him- 
self and of his dependence on God’s sufficiency, is 
naturally led to take. The very serious difficulties 
which this view presents could be set aside as mysteries 
which it would be presumption in man to claim that 
he could penetrate. (a) For the doctrine of election, 
which is the most conspicuous instance of this theo- 
logical tendency, there is a truly religious motive. 
Man not only desires salvation, but the assurance of 
the reality of that salvation. Were that salvation 
based on the variable will of man, that assurance 
would be gone. Were it even based on a varying 
purpose of God, certainty would be beyond reach. 
For the full confidence of faith there must be the belief 
that the salvation is God’s work and not man’s, and 
that the purpose of God to save is not a temporary 
response to a human need and appeal, but has its 
roots in the very nature of God Himself—that it is an 
_ eternal purpose which is finding its fulfilment in time. 
This conviction is expressed, with all the power and 
charm which Spurgeon could command, in a sermon, 
‘Songs in the Night.’ ‘ My beloved brethren,’ he 


238 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


says, ‘ you will find it a sweet subject for song at 
times, to begin to sing of electing love and covenanted 
mercies. When thou thyself art low, it is well to sing 
of the fountainhead of mercy, of that blest decree 
wherein thou wast ordained to eternal life, and of that 
glorious Man who undertook thy redemption ; of that 
solemn covenant signed, and sealed, and ratified, in 
all things ordered well; of that everlasting love 
which, ere the hoary mountains were begotten, or 
ere the aged hills were children, chose thee, loved thee 
firmly, loved thee first, loved thee well, loved thee 
eternally.’ (b) Where this legitimate demand of the 
soul is abandoned, and.a precarious assumption takes 
its place, is where this purpose is not conceived as 
universal, embracing all mankind, but as particular, 
discriminating the one man from the other, electing 
the one, reprobating the other. In the same sermon 
Spurgeon speaks of ‘ electing love’ and ‘ discrimin- 
ating mercy.’ But can a love which is partial be as 
full of comfort and assurance to the soul as a love that 
is universal? Can I be surer of my salvation if I 
believe that God only loves some, than if I am con- 
vinced that He loves all eternally ? This doctrine, 
however, also suffers from a moral defect. A senti- 
ment which is contrary to the spirit of Christ enters 
in when the man rejoices in the certainty of his own 
salvation, and acquiesces, even if he does not find 
some satisfaction, in the fact that others have not been 
so favoured as he has been. That He might save 
others Jesus would not save Himself (Mark xv. 31). 
Paul was willing to be anathema from Christ for his 
brethren’s sake (Romans ix. 3). This is the Christian 
sentiment. If reprobation is the necessary counter- 
part of election, then to find joy in being elected out 
of a race the majority of which has been reprobated 
is a selfish feeling, and selfishness is not less but even 
more offensive when it invades the relation of man 
to God. If we have really seen God in the face of 
Jesus Christ, it should be impossible for us to believe, 
unless in deference to the Holy Scriptures we silence 
both conscience and reason within us, that God wills 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 239 


the damnation of any creature of His hand and child 
of His heart. 

(11) A passage which is claimed as a sure foundation 
for the doctrine of election is that in which Paul is 
explaining the refusal of his own nation to accept the 
Gospel (Rom. ix. 1-29). He does undoubtedly, with 
almost brutal ruthlessness, declare God’s right to do 
as He will with His creatures, to save some, to damn 
others ; and he supports his contention by quotations 
from the Scriptures which it must be admitted do 
indicate facts of history, whether the explanation of 
them be adequate or not. (a) What has been ignored 
by Calvinism in its use of this passage is that it is 
what the logicians call an argumentum ad hominem. 
Paul is rebuking Jewish arrogance, which was claiming 
a privileged position towards God. If God had a 
right to choose Israel, He has no less a right to reject 
Israel. On the level of Jewish thought the argument 
was strictly valid. But Paul cannot himself remain 
on that level. He rises first to the merely moral 
and then to the Christian solution of the problem with 
which he is dealing. Israel has been rejected because 
it deserved to be rejected on account of its unbelief 
(ix. 30, x. 21). But the rejection is only temporary, 
and has the salvation of Jew and Gentile alike as its 
end (xi. 1-31). °*God hath shut up all unto dis- 
obedience, that He might have mercy upon all’ (v. 32). 
It would be well if the whole argument were always 
considered, and not one part of it only. In Paul 
there is, not a dogmatic universalism, but at least a 
hope for mankind, in which the doctrine of particular 
election passes out of sight altogether. 

(b) It has often been contended that history proves 
that God’s dealings with men are discriminative. 
That there are differences of natural endowment and 
historical circumstances among men may be frankly 
admitted. But it is too rash an inference that these 
are directly due to any arbitrary exercise of the 
divine will. Just as we come to understand nature 
do we recognise that God works in and through an 
order of nature, not setting it aside, not interfering 


240 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


with its operations. So also as we study history do 
we find sequence, reason, purpose. We recognise 
more fully man’s responsibility for the course of 
events. Wedo not exclude God; but He comes into 
the course of history not as absolute Will above and 
beyond, but as Holy Love within and through, the 
reason, the conscience, and the spirit of man. As 
psychology will disclose to us more fully the working 
of the mind of man, we shall have a fuller under- 
standing of the differences among men. We shall 
then abandon the conception of a God whose will 
cannot be understood by the reason and approved 
by the conscience of man, but must be accepted as 
inscrutable mystery ; but we shall find the Father of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who discloses 
Himself to us in His works and ways as holy love, to 
which our hearts respond. Paul’s own illustration 
of the potter and the clay (Rom. ix. 21) forbids the 
assumption of an arbitrary action of God in history. 
The potter can do with the clay what he will only as 
he takes account of the quality of the clay. He will 
not use the better clay to make what could be made 
out of clay less good. He makes the best and the 
most of his material if he is a master of his craft and 
not a bungler init. Shall we ascribe less wisdom and 
skill to God ? +Thus Paul’s argument, closely scruti- 
nised, does not support the doctrine of election, as has 
often been assumed. 

(iii) The argument against Calvinism from the 
standpoint of God’s revelation in Christ is conclusive. 
With this revelation the doctrine of foreknowledge 
and foreordination alike is inconsistent. The passages 
in the Holy Scriptures which teach these doctrines, 
or in some instances are supposed to teach them, 
involve the conception of God as Almighty Will, 
and not as Holy Love. (a) If God made man free 
that he might realise the ideal of personality, He 
did commit to man the decision of his own destiny, 
and did not anticipate that decision by any divine 
decree. If it was in holy love that God created man, 
what He desires and purposes for all is eternal life 





a 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 241 


and not death. Men may hinder and thwart God’s 
purpose; and human history is the record of man’s 
working alongside of God, both against and for His 
purpose. ‘To interpret history as merely the carrying 
out in time of a complete divine programme, fixed 
in eternity in all its details, is to empty it of all mean- 
ing and worth by reducing it to a mere puppet-show, 
and to make God a showman who pulls the strings 
responsible for all the movements of the puppets. 
A logically consistent Calvinism ends in a pantheism 
in which God must be identified no less with all the 
evil than with all the good. The fulfilment of God’s 
purpose depends on the free acts of man. God by 
His Spirit does morally and religiously direct and 
control the spirit of man, but always consistently with 
his freedom. ‘To make God directly responsible for 
every event is to charge Him with willing evil as well 
as good. It is not piety to ascribe to God the results 
of human sin, unless as the inevitable consequences 
in the moral order of the free acts of men. What the 
Great War has brought home to many thoughtful 
men is the reality of man’s liberty and consequent 
responsibility. God does not prevent war or promote 
peace by His omnipotence, although He does by His 
Spirit in the human reason and conscience restrain 
from evil and constrain to good. Itis by His personal 
activity in man, and thus alone, that God through 
man is fulfilling His purpose. 

(b) If God does not foreordain it is no less necessary . 
for man’s freedom that He should not foreknow. 
How a foreknown act can be a free act is inconceivable. 
How can what in God’s mind is already fixed as 
actual be for man’s choice only possible? This 
dilemma cannot be escaped by saying that the relation 
of God to man is inscrutable, for the difficulty is the 
creation of man’s own speculative thought about God. 
The assertion of God’s foreknowledge is no datum of 
experience: it isan inference from a certain conception 
of God. Granted that God knows all, He knows the 
actual as actual, and the possible as possible; other- 
wise His knowledge would not correspond with reality 

Q 


242 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


just as it is. Further, such teaching as is given by 
Jesus about God’s relation to man, His pain in man’s 
sin, His joy in man’s recovery, would be meaningless 
if God foreknew each human choice before it was made. 
If the shepherd knew that he would find the lost sheep, 
would his sorrow at the loss be as great? Such an 
analogy on the lips of Jesus can be confidently used 
against all speculative conjecture. Human history 
would lose its interest for God if He were eternally 
contemplating all that occurs. God can be man’s 
fellow-sufferer, as man is God’s fellow-worker in 
history only as it is for God the unfolding of His 
purpose, not according to a fixed, timed programme, 
but with hindrances, delays, recoveries, triumphs 
unforeseen due to the varying activity of man as 
partner with God, and God’s varying activity in 
guiding man’s actions as partner with man. We 
must set aside all speculative conclusions about God, 
and frankly and boldly render explicit all that is im- 
plicit in Christ’s teaching about God’s Fatherhood. 
(iv) What can be offered in place of the assurance 
of salvation that the doctrine of election gave to 
those who believed themselves the elect ? -What 
certainty is there that God will accomplish the work 
of saving mankind? All security would be taken 
from religion if we were to think of God as with man 
engaged in a conflict, uncertain of victory, needing 
man’s help, and not sure of His own strength. As 
has already been shown, Christ was absolutely con- 
fident as regards not only God’s goodwill but also 
Mis power to give effect to that goodwill. The more 
fully we recognise the reality of history, the depend- 
ence of the fulfilment of God’s purpose on man’s free 
acts, the more necessary is it for us to cherish Christ’s 
confidence in the sufficiency of God, not as physical 
omnipotence but as personal perfection. Unless we 
are to be put to moral and religious confusion, God’s 
Fatherhood must mean to us that God can do what 
He wills. ‘ Hope putteth not to shame, because the 
love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts 
through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us’ 


THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER 243 


(Rom. v. 5). We may say boldly that if God is 
Father, He would never have created a race that He 
could not redeem. These are responsibilites of a 
Creator—not to begin a work which He cannot finish, 
not to make an experiment which He has not the 
resources to make a success. Though God neither 
foreordains nor foreknows man’s free acts, and man’s 
freedom has full unhindered scope, He knows the 
limits within which that freedom, its use or abuse, 
can affect, to help or to hinder, the fulfilment of His 
purpose, and He knows what are His resources to 
meet every emergency. While we may not confidently 
affirm that every man will be saved, yet we may be 
sure that all the ways and works of God as Creator 
will at last find their vindication in God as Redeemer, 
the Father of all reconciling the world unto Himself 
in His Son. We may share with Paul the exultant 
and triumphant assurance of having been chosen of 
God, not out of but with the race, for salvation from 
the foundation of the world, for it was for this very 
end that, as far as we can construe the meaning of 
the world, the world was made and is kept in being by 
God. ‘The Lamb hath been slain from the founda- 
tion of the world ’ (Rev. xi. 8) that He might redeem 
‘unto God with His blood men of every tribe, and 
tongue, and people, and nation,’ and might make 
them ‘to be unto our God a kingdom and priests ’ 
(v. 9-10). 


CHAPTER II 


THE RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD 
AND MAN 


I 


(1) Curist1an theology is not primarily concerned 
with the world as the object of the explanations of 
science, the interpretations of philosophy, but almost 
exclusively with the relation of the world to God, and 
with other aspects only as they bear on that relation. 
The Biblical cosmology has for it an interest and value 
as showing how men inspired of God, but limited to 
the knowledge of the world of their own age and 
surroundings, conceived that relation ; but it has not 
an authority which would supplant that of science 
in its own sphere. If it knows its own proper business 
it will not attempt to reconcile geology and Genesis 1., 
or confront biology and anthropology with the account 
of man’s origin in Genesis ii. While with the writers 
in the Holy Scriptures it will affirm the truth that 
God is Creator, as regards the process of the Creation 
of both the world and man it will ungrudgingly and 
even heartily accept the light that science may throw | 
upon the subject. Only..when science trespasses — 
beyond its own proper territory, and attempts ‘to 
answer those ultimate questions which neither its” : 
methods nor its results*make it competent to deal 
with, or when theology, ignoring its own limitations, 
tries to impose answers to questions with which | 
science alone can deal;~can there be any Conflict 
between science and theology. Even if it be a counsel 

of perfection, it would be well if scientists knew enough 
about theology, and theologians enough about science, 


not to invade the one the other’s province. The 
244 






" 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 245 


theologian needs to remember always that the Bible ) 
was given to make men wise unto salvation and not_ 
unto science, and the man of science that there are 
things in heaven and earth not dreamed of in his 
philosophy. Theology must challenge any philosophy — 
which, based exclusively on the conclusions of science, 
ignores the testimony of the moral conscience and the 
religious consciousness, and most of all the fact of 
Christ, on the ground that it has not taken due account 
of all the data for an interpretation of total reality. 
Theology, on the other hand, cannot ignore either 
science or philosophy, in so far as any of their con- 
clusions have any bearing on the subject which 1s its 
dominant interest. As to the mode of Creation it 
will gladly go to school with science; as regards the 
categories of thought which it must employ it will 
give heed to any scrutiny to which philosophy may 
have subjected them. It will not meet them ‘as 
enemies in the gate,’ but work with them as allies in 
the one common task of discovering the truth. 

(2) In the previous chapter reference has already 
been made to the divine attributes of infinitude 
and absoluteness, transcendence and immanence. As 
transcendent, above and beyond the world, God is 
infinite and absolute, not without limits or relations, 
but self-limited and self-related, He has what theo- 
logians have called aseity and proseity: ultimate 
cause of the world, He is His own cause; final purpose 
of the world, He is His own purpose. He has suffi- 
ciency in Himself, and does not depend on His relation 
to the world for His reality. He is eternal as not in 
His own existence subject to time, and He is immense 
as not subject to space. While the religious con- 
sciousness itself may not be aware of these conceptions, 
they are legitimate speculative deductions from what 
religion believes God to be. God’s eternity and im- 
mensity are thoughts familiar to all profound religious 
experience. God must be so conceived when we make 
explicit all that is implicit in man’s sense of God’s 
sufficiency and his own dependence. As immanent, 
God is in the world, and one of the most crucial 


246 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


problems of theology is the relation between this 
immanence and this transcendence. This transcend- 
ence in the immanence is expressed in the three terms 
familiar to religious thought generally—omnipresence, 
omniscience, and omnipotence ; the first part of each 
of these words indicates the transcendence and the 
second the immanence. God is not present, diffused 
throughout space, as is the hypothetical ether ; He 
is wholly present in every point of space and moment 
of time. He knows all that is as itis. (This does not 
necessarily involve foreknowledge of free acts, as has 
been shown in the previous chapter.) He can do all 
that can be done. (This does not, however, mean 
that He does all that is done; man’s free acts are 
excepted, and, if even in living organisms there is 
any spontaneity, the process of life is not directly and 
exclusively God’s activity.) There is a universal 
activity of God in the Universe sustaining in existence 
what God has created; and this activity is con- 
ditioned by the nature of the reality God has brought 
into being. Each event is not separately, independ- 
ently willed by God, but there is an order of nature 
in which is the immediate cause of this effect, although 
it is God’s activity which is the ultimate cause of this 
system. To these three terms we should, in accord 
with the revelation in Christ, add a fourth, omni- 
patience. God feels with and in all His sentient 
creatures. It is thus the whole of God as personal 
which is wholly present in the Universe. 

(8) These terms state the problem, and do not solve 
it.” How can we get from the One to the many, from 
the Infinite to the finite, from the Absolute to the 
dependent, from the Eternal to the temporal? The 
Incarnation is the clue to Creation and Conservation. 
Paul in giving the Lord Jesus Christ as an example 
of humility and consideration (Phil. ii. 5-8) has stated 
a cosmic principle. It is by kenosis, self-emptying, 
that God reaches self-fulfilment, plerosis, in His 
‘universe. This is not intended to be understood in 
the Hegelian sense that God Himself as God evolves 
with the Universe, and reaches full self-consciousness 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 247 


in the Hegelian philosophy: it does not mean even 
that God realises Himself as God in the Christian 
revelation and redemption. To the transcendence of 
God we must hold fast as an anchor of our thought 
without which we should drift into all kinds of specu- 
lations perilous to morality and religion. It is God 
as immanent in the Universe in whom we may 
recognise self-limitation for self-expression and self- 
communication. It is love which can so find itself 
in losing itself. From the Christian standpoint we 
may boldly affirm that it was love which was the 
motive of Creation. God is not such uncontrolled 
fullness of reality that it must overflow into the 
Universe, God is not such unsatisfied desire that He 
needs to make a world to meet His needs. We may 
not ascribe to God any need except love’s need of 
loving and of freely giving of its fullness. If it be 
objected that such a view makes God dependent on 
the Universe, and that before the world was there 
must have been an incompleteness in God, we may 
give a twofold answer. According to the Christian 
doctrine of the Trinity, the exposition of which must, 
however, be reserved to the very end of this volume, 
God is in Himself both subject and object of love: 
the love of the Father and of the Son is perfected in 
the unity of the Spirit. And further, although the 
world as we know it gives indications of a commence- 
ment and also of a consummation of its evolution, the 
creative, preservative, and perfective process in space 
and time, we must not affirm that God’s love was not 
active in worlds other than this. We must not with 
Greek dualism affirm an eternal matter, which the 
divine mind brings from potentiality to actuality ; but 
Christian faith does not demand any denial of the possi- 
bility of other worlds dependent for existence on God. 

(4) As love is that in which man is most akin to 
God, we may use the analogy of human love in trying 
to conceive the divine kenosis. Human love, especi- 
ally of the mother for the child, needs and shows 
self-limitation for self-expression and self-communica- 
tion. The mother must become a child to teach and 


x 


248 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


train her child. She must limit herself to the capacity 
of the child to respond and to receive. We cannot 
imagine the process of Creation, but we can conceive 
its principle. Physical forces are God’s infinite power 
in finite exercise; natural laws are God’s infinite 
wisdom in finite expression. Whatever God thus 
brings into existence has reality for God, and the 
further process of Creation is conditioned by that 
reality. Evolution as the mode of this process is 
much more intelligible and credible than successive 
acts of creation not continuous with one another. 
Evolution means continuity with change. The suc-. 
cession is not mere succession, but progress. Theistic 
thought should not insist on breaks or pauses in the 
divine activity. It recognises stages, in each of which 
something new comes into existence, not unrelated 
to but dependent on what already is. We need not 
for our purpose concern ourselves with the physicist’s 
speculations about the ultimate nature of matter, 
atoms or electrons, except to point out that the 
matter of the old materialism is fast dissolving into 
something which presents a less absolute contrast to 
mind. Nevertheless, matter, however we may con- 
ceive it, is that which is furthest removed from the 
conception of God; may we express it thus: it is the. 
furthest. limit of God’s self-emptying? Life more. 
fully expresses what God is than does matter. While 
physical conditions and chemical processes are in- 
volved in the continuance of life, yet life is not ex- 
plicable in terms of matter and force only. Physics 


and chemistry do not solve the problems of biology ; — 
this we may emphasise without committing ourselves ~ 


to any theory of vitalism. Whether we can dis- 
tinguish life and mind is very doubtful; there seems_ 
to be a mental factor in all organic development : } 
but we need not commit ourselves to panpsychism. 
Certain it is that the physiology of the brain and 
nervous system does not remove the need of the 
psychology of the mind. When mind becomes con- 


“1 See Ward’s Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii., Lecture X. 
* See Tansley’s The New Psychology and its Relation to Life. 


: 
j 


| 


{ 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 249 


scious, and still more when consciousness becomes 
self-consciousness, fresh stages of evolution are reached. 
If the whole process be divine activity, at these marked 
stages in the process, we may venture to speak of a 
divine initiative. The self-expression becomes clearer, 
and the self-communication fuller. As far as our 
knowledge can carry us, this evolution has its con- 
summation in man. What must be said about man’s 
place in Creation must be reserved for another section ; 
but here it will suffice to state that in man’s de- 
velopment rationally, aesthetically, morally, socially, 
religiously, the creative process is continued, although 
its content is now changed; it is not from matter 
through life to mind: it is within mind. Christ as 
the firstborn of many brethren marks a new stage in 
that creative process, the stage which will be con- 
summated in the redeemed family of God in perfection, 
glory, blessedness, the plerosis of God accomplished 
by His kenosis. So may we conceive Creation from 
the Christian standpoint in accord with the conclu- 
sions of science. 

(5) There are other conceptions of God’s relation to 
the world which need explication in the same way. 
The creative process is continuous; but what has 
been created remains real for God, and conditions 
that process. Thus life is dependent on physical 
conditions and chemical processes, and mind as we 
now know it in man is conditioned by the living 
organism. The continuance of what is as the con- 
dition of what is coming to be is usually described 
as conservation. Paul expresses this truth in relation 
to man in the words, ‘In Him we live, and move, 
and have our being’ (Acts xvii. 28). To the creature 
God gives a permanent reality not independent of 
His activity, and yet preserved in its distinctive 
nature. When we come to man, that conservation 
allows a relative independence; so that while God is 
sustaining the existence of the human personality, 
there is an activity which is not directly God’s, but 


1 A very full discussion of this subject will be found in The Spiritual Inter- 
pretation of Nature, by J. Y. Simpson. 


250 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


has its source in the personality God has created as 
free will. That freedom is within the limits set to 
the capacity of human personality, and the control 
which man can exercise over nature. The conse- 
quences of man’s activity in his own character, and 
circumstances, further circumscribe that activity. He 
who sows to the flesh cannot from the flesh reap any- 
thing else than corruption, as he that soweth to the 
Spirit will from the Spirit reap life everlasting (Gal. 
vi. 8). There is a physical order and a moral order. 
which man can discover by his reason and conscience, 
which sets the bounds to his activity. It is thus that 
God conserves man; and as this conservation is not 
apart from but through man, it may be called govern- , 
ment. As God has a personal relation to each man, 
a purpose for mankind which He is fulfilling in and by 
each man, there is an activity of God, both through 
the system of nature and the course of history, which 
is named His Providence. 

(6) There are few subjects on which there is so much 
crudity of thought among Christian people as on the 
subject of providence. The Hebrew prophets inter- 
preted the history of their nation as divine providence. 
God used the great empires, into contact with which 
His people came, as the instruments of His purposes 
of judgment or mercy. Jesus taught very clearly 
God’s constant activity in caring for His children. 
There is a universal impartial beneficence in sunshine 
and shower (Matt. v. 45); and there is an individual 
guidance and guardianship (x. 29-31). God provides 
for all and for each. As the Hebrew prophets recog- 
nised a divine purpose, so did Jesus; God controls 
nature and directs history for that purpose. 

(1) It is as men relate themselves to that purpose 
that the divine providence (Luke xn. 32) becomes 
more manifest in their lives. If their interests and 
pursuits are remote from that purpose, they cannot 
have the same assurance of God’s keeping and leading. 
The man who follows his own wishes and sets aside 
God’s claim has no right to expect God to shield him 
from the consequences of his own acts, or assure him 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 251 


of the satisfaction of his own desires. To claim that 
every occurrence is of God’ S appointment is to make 
God responsible for man’s sin and its consequences. 
God’s providence does not mean that every man will | 
get what he wants; even the saint may suffer, but 
get gain by the way he endures it, while for the wicked 
the same suffering may result in hardening of heart 
(Rom. ix..18). God is not a means to man’s ends, 
and only as a man makes God’s ends his own in love 
for God can he be sure that all things will work to- 
gether for good (Rom. viii. 28). 

(1) It is through nature and history that God’s 
providence is realised ; and it is an error that only in 
occurrences which are strange and seemingly inex- 
plicable is God’s providence recognised. This is not 
Christian theism, but a survival of the deism of the 
eighteenth century. God is for the most part regarded 
as absent or inactive in the world, with only occasional 
incursions into a world that otherwise goes on without 
Him. ‘To believe in God aright is to believe that He 
is always and everywhere present and active in nature 
and history. It is from the standpoint of belief in 
the constant and efficient immanence of God that 
we must regard the problem of miracles. It is not 
strength but weakness of faith to look for God’s care 
and bounty, guidance and guardianship, only in events 
which can be regarded as miracles, and to overlook 
His goodness in the order of nature or the course of 
history. So common, however, is this attitude, that 
the subject of miracles demands a close scrutiny. 

(7) We may at once set aside the older definitions 
of miracles as interferences with or suspensions of 
the order of nature, for there is no order of nature 
apart from God’s conserving activity. God does not 
contradict or oppose Himself. The regularity of the 
order of nature is the constancy of God. As that 
order shows His wisdom and goodness as well as His 
power, to assume that He sets it aside to bring about 
His ends is to charge Him with fickleness. What 
mental confusion and physical disaster would result 
if men could not rely on the regularity of that order ! 


252 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Men can control physical forces as they understand 
and conform to natural laws; and man’s culture and 
civilisation would fall in ruins were God not constant 
in His activity in nature. But consistently with that 
order we may conceive an activity of God which is not 
explicable by that order as our science has got to 
know it. For the ends of the revelation of God or 
the redemption of man such activity may be necessary, 
as the natural order, adequate as it is for most of God’s 
dealings with man, may be insufficient for the more 
intimate relation of God to man in revelation and 
redemption. If a human analogy may with due 
reserve be used in illustration, we may describe the 
laws of nature as showing God’s habits, and miracles 
as original acts, not inconsistent with but not con- 
forming to those habits, to meet an emergency. No 
man is so much a slave of habit that he cannot in a 
crisis do what may be a surprise to himself as well as” 
to others. The relation of God to the world is so 
immediate and so constant, on the view here held, 
that a miracle must be regarded only as a variation 
in the mode of God’s activity, and not as an increase 
in the amount of that activity. God is not more 
active in a miracle than in the order of nature, al- 
though man’s attention to that activity may be more 
quickly arrested by the miracle. That may be one 
of the functions of miracle in the economy of revela- 
tion and redemption, and its beneficent character may 
impress as no ordinary occurrence could what is the 
character of God so revealing Himself and redeeming 
man. Such a view does not justify the expectation 
of frequent miracles, or excuse any neglect to scrutinise 
with all possible candour the evidence which is offered 
for any miracle, and to demand that each miracle 
shall authenticate itself by its relation to the purpose 
of God. Unless the Christian sources are to be 
regarded as unhistorical, Christian faith cannot aban- 
don the belief in miracle, or Christian theology the 
effort to offer an intelligible theory. 

(8) There are two questions raised by what has been 
stated regarding the relation of God to the world, 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 253 


The first is this: Why has the mode of the divine 
activity been evolution? and the second: Has this 
time-process reality for God Himself ? 

(i) To our limited intelligence it may sometimes 
seem strange that God did not at once make the world 
perfect, conforming entirely from the beginning to 
the divine intention as disclosed at the end. Why 
should matter precede life by so many aeons? Why 
should life evolve from protisia along the line of the 
protophyia to the oak, and the line of the protozoa to 
the man? Why should mind, as it were, slumber in 
the plant, be half awake in the instinct of the animal, 
and only be fully aroused in the conscience and the 
reason of man? Why should human development 
in knowledge, art, morals, society, religion have been 
so gradual, even if we assume that primitive man was 
less degraded than the savage is? (This instance 
must be mentioned to complete the series, although 
the full discussion belongs to the next section.) The 
only answer that can be suggested is, that whether 
the necessity for such a mode of creation lies in the 
very nature of finite reality or not, 1t may be that God 
Himself finds fuller satisfaction in such a method than 
in any other we could imagine. A product of our 
human activity has more worth and meaning for us, 
if it has cost us toil and time. There may be a joy 
for the Creator in the increasing variety of His creation. 
It may be, too, that in His condescension He thus 
obtains the co-operation of His creations in the creative 
process itself, the lower stage of the evolution being 
the condition of the higher stage, until in man that co- 
operation becomes fully conscious and freely exercised, 
and thus discloses the secret of the whole process. 

(11) We are thus led to the answer to our second 
question. In the discussion of God’s attributes as 
eternal and immense, it is affirmed, and rightly, that 
God in His own reality is not subject to the limitations 
of time and space. This does not, however, justify 
the rash inference that for God there is no reality, 
relative though it be, in the here and there, the 
then and the now. If the Christian doctrine of the 


254 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Incarnation be true, if there be a real participation of 
God in human history, then the time-process at least 
has reality for God. The past of history is in some 
sense past for God, and the future future; all is not 
an indistinguished present. Although in His char- 
acter God may be without variation or shadow that 
is cast by turning (James i. 17), yet in the fulfilment 
of His purpose the defeat or the triumph is real 
enough for Him to bring Him sorrow or joy. The 
time-process is invested with greater worth for man 
if it is not without meaning even for God. Would 
God be for our thought in every deed a living, working, 
suffering, and loving God did He in eternal reality 
abide above and beyond the time-process ? Because 
ancient thought regarded God as so transcendent that 
He could be described only by negations, it sought 
and found a connection between Him and the world 
in the mediating agency of the Logos. That concep- 
tion is, however, capable of being regarded in two 
ways. If it is used to emphasise the separation of 
God from the world, then it becomes a hindrance 
and not a help to Christian thought. Only when 
understood as bringing God into immediate contact 
with and immanent activity in the world does it 
make the conception of the Incarnation intelligible 
and credible. The use of the term Word in the Fourth 
Gospel prepares us for the representation of the 
immanence of the Father in the Son, and of the Son 
in those to whom He gives the right to become children 
of God. The use of the term Logos in the subsequent 
developments of Christology tended to assert such a 
separation of God and man as made the doctrine of 
the Incarnation a mystery. If the earthly life of 
Jesus had such reality for God that we may regard 
God as in Him sharing the life of man, then the time- 
process must have reality for God Himself. An 
analogy may help to suggest the relation between 
time and eternity in the divine mind. A biography, 
a drama, a poem, a symphony may be held in the 
human mind both in the variety of its details and the 
unity of its distinctive character. | 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 255 


(iii) Recognising fully that we must not unduly 
press the analogy between divine and human father- 
hood so as to ignore the difference between Creator 
and creature, we are justified in urging that the 
conception of fatherhood enables us to understand 
why evolution was the divine method of creation, | 
and why the time-process has reality for God. Would 
any human father who has accepted the responsibility 
and used the opportunity of fatherhood in the de- 
velopment of his child desire that child to be given 
to him full grown? How great a good is there in 
the guiding of that development, and the watching of 
it from stage to stage! How much more is the grown- 
up son to the father because he has thus shared his 
child’s growth from infancy to maturity! If God 
made man in His likeness, and human fatherhood is. 
a teproduction of the divine, then we may recognise 
the significance for God Himself of the time-process, 
and the value for Him of the evolution of the universe 
as the mode of creation. 


If 


It has been impossible in discussing the relation 
of God to the world to leave man out of account 
altogether; but we must now concentrate all our 
attention on the relation of God to man, and in this 
connection offer a fuller reply to the objection made 
to the belief in God’s fatherhood on the ground of 
the insignificance of man in the world.! (1) In the dog- 
matics of former times there was included an anthro- 
pology, or doctrine of man, which on the authority 
of Scripture included a great deal which does not 
properly belong to theology at all. We do not now,. 
and we cannot from the standpoint of modern know- | 
ledge, accept as literal history the record of the creation 
of man in Genesis i. or ii., whatever religious signifi- ~ 
cance and moral value we may discover in it. That 
at the end of the creative process man was made by 
God, that he has a likeness to God and can hold a 


1 The subject is discussed in its manifold bearings in J. Arthur Thomson’s 
What is Man ? 


256 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


fellowship with God such as no other creature can, 
that he has, therefore, a position of sovereignty among 
other creatures, that he has personal liberty and 
responsibility—these are truths suggested by these 
narratives, which we must include in our doctrine of 
man. Neither need we accept what has been called 
biblical psychology! as a scientific account or philo- 
sophical interpretation of human personality; the 
old controversy as to whether that psychology is 
iripartite—body, soul, and spirit—or bipartite—body 
and soul or spirit—has now only a historical interest. 
The truth this psychology conserves is that man, pos- 
sessing his own individuality (soul) is related on the 
one hand to the lower creation, sharing their creaturely 
weakness (flesh), and on the other to God, dependent 
on Him (spirit). God breathed into the dust (flesh) 
His Spirit, and man became a living soul (Gen. il. 7). 
This statement of the making of man enshrines the 
truth that in man creature and Creator meet, that 
man, linked on the one hand to all living creatures, 
is on the other hand joined to God by affinity of nature | 
and community of interest and purpose. The Hebrew 
conception that it is body and spirit which constitute 
the man, neither without the other, comes nearer 
the reality than the Greek conception of man as soul 
buried or imprisoned in body and escaping therefrom 
at death. The Hebrew conception of resurrection 
is also, as will afterwards be shown, relatively truer 
than the Greek idea of immortality. 

(2) While this is all that we need now to consider 
in regard to biblical anthropology and psychology, it 
is the biblical estimate of man which we must seek 
to justify in the terms of our modern knowledge. 

(1) As far as we can read the records of the universe, 
man is the consummation of the process of evolution. - 
There are animals which are bigger and stronger than” 
he; instinct in animals is capable of achievement 
which may fill us with wonder; some means of com- 
munication with one another gregarious animals have ; 
what look to our observation very like processes of 

1 See The Christian Doctrine of Man, by H. Wheeler Robinson, M.A. 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 257 


reasoning there are; but animals do not seem to go 
beyond perceptual inference, the association of im- 
pressions of sense, to conceptual inference, reasoning 
with ideas; some moral qualities, too, can be dis- 
cerned, as in parental care, and the affection of 
domestic animals for those with whom they often 
come into contact. There are anticipations in the 
lower animals of powers and qualities which appear 
in man. Man himself shows traces of an animal 
ancestry ; and his inheritance includes animal neces- 
sities, appetites, and instincts ; and to these the ‘ new’ 
psychology is very persistent in calling our attention. 
While Darwin held that the descent of man from the 
lower animals could be traced, Wallace, who had 
discovered the principle of natural selection independ- 
ently, before Darwin gave his discovery to the world, 
held that the distinctively human qualities could not 
be so derived, but demanded a special ‘ spiritual 
influx.’ Whether we should speak of a special creation 
of man or not is a question the answer to which 
depends on the conception we form of the relation 
of God to the world in the creative process. If the 
divine activity be continuous, as we should probably 
have to regard it, then we must not think of, as it were, 
a fresh start, or a break with what went before; and 
yet we may think of a divine initiative, a fuller com- 
munication of the mental, moral, and _ spiritual 
resources of God in and to man in the creative process 
than had gone before. That man’s brain weighs far 
more than twice that of any animal and continues 
growing very much longer than that of the apes is 
a subordinate consideration in the proof of man’s 
difference from all his fellow-creatures; it is what 
man has become in his historical development, which 
is the proof that at his creation he had a promise 
and a potency such as no other animal possessed. 
Man may within limits train the lower animals to 
do what of themselves they would never have done, 
so that some capacity for improvement does exist ; 
but progress is not found among even the highest 
species of animals, and it is characteristic of man. 
R 


258 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(ii) Those who would minimise the difference be- 
tween man and the lower animals assume that the 
savage of to-day represents what primitive man was. 
That assumption of much of the current anthropology 
must be challenged. Granted even that the savage is 
as bestial as he is sometimes represented as being by 
the superficial observer, although a closer scrutiny 
contradicts that hasty conclusion, there is no evidence 
that the savage at his worst is what primitive man 
was at his beginning. That primitive traits may be 
more easily discovered in the savage than in the 
civilised man, that relatively there has been less 
change in the savage than in the civilised man, may 
be admitted. But evolution may mean deterioration 
as well as improvement; and accordingly the un=~ 
favourable conditions of life may have made the 
savage worse, as the more favourable conditions may 
have made the civilised man better, than was the 
primitive man. That man at the beginning had that 
perfection which Christian theology has assigned to 
him, or as Milton describes Adam as having, we cannot 
maintain. What can be insisted on is this: that as 
primitive man is the common ancestor of savage and 
civilised man alike, he was so endowed that the 
subsequent progress was possible. 

(111) The argument has been summarised as follows 
by Dr. Fairbairn:! ‘ In the face, then, of their con- 
trasted histories, let us now put man and the man-like 
ape together and ask, What is the problem they offer 
to science ? Do the eloquently minimised differences 
which we find in the structure of the man as distin- 
euished from the man-like ape explain the differences 
in their histories? If they do, then we ought to be 
told how such small differences in structure have 
become causes of effects so wondrously and vastly 
opposite. If they do not, then why speak as if man 
and the man-like ape stood in the same system, and 
were in any tolerable sense related as ancestor and 
progeny ? When their respective histories are viewed 
together and honestly compared, is it true that man 

* The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 45. 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 259 


is in faculty as in structure one with the brutes ? 
Must it not rather be affirmed that man starts with 
some endowment which the brute has not? If 
Darwin. needed his first form before he could trace 
the genesis of species, so not less is it true that we 
must have mind before the history of man becomes 
possible or capable of intellectual realisation. But 
if it be mind that constitutes the differentiation of 
man from brute, then to imagine that the distance 
between them is reduced by the discovery of simil- 
arities in their organic structure is a mere irrelevance 
of thought.’ Mind is evidently used in this statement 
in the restricted sense of mind as it is in man, and what 
it has achieved in human history. We do not deny, 
as has already been shown, that wherever there is life 
there seems to be mind, that in the lower animals a 
rudimentary intelligence is to be found, and that not 
in the form of instinct alone; but it is developed 
mind as_ self-consciousness, reason and conscience, 
science, art, literature, civilisation, morals and religion 
which so distinguishes man from all other living 
creatures that his advent marks a fresh stage in the 
evolution of the world. That the living organism, 
which is the organ of the mind, has been gradually 
developed out of lower forms need not be denied, 
indeed cannot, as the human embryo recapitulates 
the organic development. But a problem does remain. 
The mind and its organ are so closely related, that it 1s 
difficult, if not impossible, to understand how, apart 
from the gradual impartation of the higher endowment 
which belongs to man, an organism could be gradually 
developed capable of receiving that higher endow- 
ment. The conviction that man is so immeasurably 
different from the lower animals has a solid basis, 
and does not rest on this or that solution of any 
biological problem.? 

(3) It has been assumed in the previous discussion 


1 Thomson, who maintains the continuity of the process of creation, states 
the difference between man and animal as follows: ‘The big differences 
seem to us to be man’s capacity for looking at himself objectively, for framing 
and experimenting with general ideas and controlling conduct in relation to 
them, and for expressing judgment in language ’ (op. cit. p. 76). 


260 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


that mankind is one, and that we can assume a common 
ancestry for all mankind, irrespective of colour, ete. 
It is true that one French school of anthropology, 
that of Lévy Brihl, tries to prove that the savage has 
another mentality from the civilised man; but when 
we examine the processes of thought of other races, 
black, brown, or yellow, unlike as their results may 
be to our own thoughts, we can make intelligible to 
ourselves from what data of experiences, and by what 
association of ideas, these conclusions have been 
reached. With a fair measure of success we can 
school ourselves to ‘ think black’ as well as ‘ white.’ 
Again, among the peasantry of the more backward 
European nations we can find similar ways of think- 
ing. And in the civilised religions there are survivals 
of kindred modes of belief.t It was assumed that the 
aborigines of Australia were savages so degraded that 
they had no religion, but closer inquiry has revealed 
a most complex system of religious belief and culture. 
The story is well known of how Darwin was convinced 
that the Patagonians could be raised out of their low 
condition to Christian belief and life. When we con- 
sider the marvellous monuments which the buried 
civilisations and cultures of the past, Egyptian, Baby- 
lonian, Assyrian, Persian, have left behind, we dare 
not claim that the European peoples have some inborn 
superiority to other races. The ancient civilisations 
of India, China, and Japan also survive to rebuke any 
such conceit. There are some races, it is true, such as 
the Red Indians, who seem to be unable to survive 
the contact with the white race; but it is a serious 

1 At the first Universal Races Congress, held in London, July 26-29, 1911, 
Dr. Charles 8. Myers of Cambridge submitted and proved the four following 
propositions :— 

‘I. That the mental characters of the majority of the peasant class through- 
out Europe are essentially the same as those of primitive communities. 

‘Il. That such differences between them as exist are the result of differences 
in environment and in individual variability. 

‘III. That the relation between the organism and its environment (con- 
sidered in its broadest sense) is the ultimate cause of variation, bodily and 
mental. 

‘IV. That this being admitted, the possibility of the development of all 


primitive peoples must be conceded, if only the environment can be appro- 
priately changed.’ (Inter-Racial Problems, p. 73.) 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 261 


consideration whether that is due to any native in- 
feriority on their part, or to the unwisdom and even 
unrighteousness of their treatment by white peoples. 
Probably it is as regards the negro race that inferiority 
by nature is most confidently asserted. But if we 
give due weight to the influence of environment we 
shall hesitate about accepting such a_ conclusion. 
Climatic conditions in Africa itself go far to explain 
the stagnation or even retrogression of the black 
peoples. The negro in America, who is descended 
from a slave ancestry, has not yet had his full oppor- 
tunity for a long enough time to show what his race 
is capable of, although there are outstanding indi- 
viduals who rebuke such race prejudice. It must be 
admitted that in America as in Africa the black 
people, even when converted to Christianity, still need 
the tutelage of white men, and often show an emotional 
excitability and moral instability which necessitates 
such guardianship. It is not at all necessary to deny 
that there are psychical as well as physical differences 
of the races which may offer some ground for the 
objection to ‘ mixed marriages’ apart from colour 
prejudice altogether, or to desire that these differ- 
ences did not exist, in order to affirm the ultimate 
unity of the human race, the capacity of all men to 
respond in sonship to the universal fatherhood of 
God. 

(4) This discussion has already involved the use of 
three terms which need to be more fully explored— 
heredity, environment, and individuality. These are 
the factors which go to the making of human per- 
sonality. 

(i) It is commonly assumed that children will re- 
semble their parents in physical features, menta! 
capacity, and even moral character. The popular 
phrase, ‘a chip of the old block,’ expresses this common 
assumption. But in accounting for the facts which 
justify this assumption we must carefully distinguish 
physical heredity and social inheritance. By physical 
heredity we mean the transmission from parents to 
children by the vital organism, including such mental 


262 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


modifications as are dependent on that organism. 
Tastes, habits, vices or virtues it is certain are not 
transmitted in this way. The Darwinian theory 
assumes that ‘ acquired characters’ are transmitted 
from parents to offspring. This is denied by the school 
of Weismann; and ‘it is in this direction that the bulk 
of the scientific evidence points.’! However it may 
be accounted for, there are good stocks and bad stocks, 
in which excellences or defects are dominant. While 
the embryo in the womb is protected from most in- 
fections, there are racial poisons, due to alcoholism 
and venereal disease, which do injure the unborn babe. 
Within narrower limits than theology has often taken 
for granted, science does confirm the statement that 
God in the natural order even does visit * the iniquity 
of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and 
upon the fourth generation of them that hate’ Him, 
and does show ‘ mercy unto thousands of them that 
love’ Him ‘ and keep’ His ‘ commandments’ (Exod. 
xx. 5,6). But that Adam’s sin should have involved 
all mankind in total depravity, the modern scientific 
view of heredity does not allow us to affirm. (To this 
subject we must return in the next chapter.) The 
two objections to this doctrine the writer has stated 
elsewhere.? ‘Two considerations may make us pause 
before we ascribe moral resemblances to physical 
heredity. Firstly, unless organism determines per- 
sonality to a greater extent than appears probable, 
we cannot even conceive the vital mechanism by which 
moral character could be transmitted from parent to 
offspring. The Mendelian theory is based on physical 
characteristics, such as size, colour, etc., andit is arash 
and bold assumption that vices and virtues can be 
accounted for similarly. Secondly, the environment 
affects the development of the child most potently in 
the earliest years, and the moral resemblances may 
be due to parental influence after birth, rather than 
to heredity before. It has been proved again and 


1 Thomson, op. cit., p. 140. 
2 A Handbook of Christian Apologetics, pp. 169-70. The second considera- 
tion above holds if the stock itself is not bad. 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 263 


again that if the child of evil parents be removed 
in infancy or early childhood to a good moral en- 
vironment, there is no moral resemblance to them. 
Heredity cannot be proved an inescapable moral fate. 
Just as the great majority of children are born 
physically healthy, and infantile mortality is due to 
evil conditions, so we may maintain that as regards 
moral heredity children are born without any moral 
determination for good or evil.’ Heredity is seen 
more in the primary instincts than in the individual 
characteristics. 

(ii) The environment, especially in the earliest years, 
is a potent factor. The disposition, temper, character, 
and conduct of the parents are moulding the person- 
ality of the child from the very beginning ; the mother 
is the child’s earliest and in many ways most in- 
fluential environment, as she influences even the 
unborn babe. A mother may be punishing her own 
bad temper as reproduced in her babe. It is through 
the environment that the social inheritance comes to 
the child, the opinions and beliefs, the moral habits 
and standards, the religious disposition and aspiration 
of a society, the product of the development of past 
generations. By these the child is moulded for good 
or evil, weal or woe. It is not at all probable that 
human nature as such has been to any great extent 
modified in the course of human development; the 
civilised man, when the restraints of a civilised society 
are removed, if he be not constrained by the moral 
principles and the religious convictions which have 
come to him in his social inheritance, but which he 
has made his own, will very readily relapse to the 
savage. War lets loose the wild beast in many a man. 
As has just been indicated, the social inheritance may 
affect the personality in two ways, either as only an 
outward restraint, or as also an inward constraint. 
The aim of education should be to transform the one 
into the other. Only when a man has assimilated 
that social inheritance, made it his very own, in- 
separable from himself, has it had its full mfluence 
upon him. Nurture is of great importance in the 


264 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


making of personality, environment counts as well as 
heredity; this is a hopeful view, as nurture is more 
flexible than nature, and we can control environment 
to a greater extent than we can heredity. But even 
environment is not finally decisive of character. 
Potent moral influences on personality can secure a 
triumph over an adverse heredity or environment. 
As it would be a dangerous cruelty to make the moral 


struggle for any man more severe than in any case 


it must be, the recognition of this fact should not make 
us indifferent to any efforts to modify the heredity, 
so far as that may be possible, or to improve the 
environment, which is in so many ways practicable. . 

(iii) No human being is merely the product of 
heredity and environment; even if with the biologist 
we could sum up all that belongs to his heredity, or 
with the sociologist all that has affected his environ- 
ment, we should not have fully explained the man. 
There may be striking physical resemblances, on which 
literary genius may base a Comedy of Errors ; we may 
describe the children of the same parents as being 
‘ like two peas in a pod,’ even although the two. peas 
in a pod are not exactly alike; nevertheless, no two 
persons are complete copies of one another. We must 
recognise as a third factor in the development of 
personality individuality. Each man is not a product 
only, he is a producer. He makes himself what he is, 
and in his own way. Heredity and environment may 
provide much of the raw material, it is individuality 
which determines the pattern of the fabric of life. 
And in this individuality we may distinguish two 
elements, one constant and one variable. (a) Each 
man has his own capacities and characteristics, 
peculiar to himself and constant, although he must 
develop, and in that development may modify them. 
The common saying, ‘ You can’t make a silk purse out 
of a sow’s ear,’ indicates that individuality, even as 
heredity and environment, is a limitation on human 
development. A stupid man cannot be made, or 
make himself, into a genius; it is doubtful whether 
a melancholy temperament can be changed into a 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 265 


sanguine; the tendency to quick temper may be 
controlled, but probably cannot be suppressed al- 
together. 

(6) But what also belongs to individuality is 
liberty within the limits which have already been 
indicated. It is not needful for the present purpose 
to go over the old battle between determinism and 
indeterminism. The determinist assumption that it 
is the strongest motive which determines the choice 
can on a careful psychological analysis of the relation 
between desire and volition be shown to be false.! 
It is because the self identifies itself and seeks its 
satisfaction in the fulfilment of one of the conflicting 
desires that that desire becomes the motive of the 
action. It is the exclusive concentration of the 
attention on the object desired that results in the 
action necessary for its attainment, and this attention 
is directed by the selective interest of the person making 
the choice; he is attracted to and fixes his attention 
on what he thinks will satisfy him. The indeterminist 
is no less in error in his analysis, when he assumes 
motiveless volition, or when he treats the will as a 
separate entity, and talks about the will choosing. 
It is the self that chooses, and its choice is its willing. 
The self chooses what at the time it regards as its 
good—this is what we mean by the freedom of the will. 
We may carry our analysis a little further. There is 
the good chosen, and there is the self choosing. Now, 
the self may be mistaken as to its good ; it may choose 
what it regards as its good but what is only a partial 
or momentary good, not the complete, permanent 
satisfaction of the whole enduring personality. It 
may thus bring itself into subjection to appetites and 
passions which limit its freedom, in hindering it from 
becoming really the self it was meant to be. By such 
mistaken choice man may freely will his own bondage, 
from which, however, he cannot so freely will his own 
deliverance, as in so doing he has lessened his freedom. 
If the self were the product only of heredity and 
environment, and the constant individuality, then 

* See The Elements of Ethics, by Muirhead, pp. 48-61, 


266 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


self-determination would still be a negation of free- 
dom. We must then conclude that the self is not 
merely a measurable actuality, but an incalculable 
possibility. We get beyond the region of quantitative 
relations of cause and effect. In the exercise of its 
freedom the self is above and beyond the phenomenal, 
and has risen into the noumenal order, as Kant 
affirmed.’ The categories of the understanding which 
we may apply to the data of our experience do not 
apply to the subject of this experience. Psychology 
may trace a continuity of desire, motive, volition as 
the successive contents of our consciousness; but it 
cannot apply the category of causality to that free 
act of the self by which the desire becomes the motive 
of the volition. The character which has already 
been formed as the result of previous conduct does 
not exhaust the self, and so from a man’s character 
we cannot infallibly predict what his conduct in any 
situation will be. There are reserves of personality 
which appear in conversion, for instance. The only 
way in which we can conceive this freedom is as the 
delegated creative power of God in man. Man is 
always making himself, and is always more than he 
has already made himself. Just as the physical 
conditions and the chemical processes in the organism 
do not explain life, but life transcends while using 
them, just as the nervous system and the brain do 
not explain mind, but mind transcends while using 
them, so heredity, environment, individuality as con- 
stant, and even character as formed, do not explain 
the free act, but the free self is master of them all. 
We are thus led out of the region of physiology and 
even psychology into the realm of metaphysics, the 
nature of ultimate, essential reality, even to theology, 
the relation of God Himself to each self which in its 
freedom is exercising, even if within limits, creative 
power. 

(5) We are thus confronted with the question of the 
origin of the soul. On this matter there were in the 


* The Critique of the Practical Reason, Book u. chap. ii. See The Critical 
Philosophy of Kant, by Caird, 11. chap. iii. 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 267 


patristic period three theories held, which Harnack 
has briefly summarised.! ‘ The different psychological 
views of the Fathers are reflected in the various 
theories as to the origin of individual souls. The 
oldest of these was the traducian theory of Tertullian, 
which was also represented by a few Greeks—Gregory 
of Nyssa, Anastasius Sinaita. According to it the 
soul was begotten along with the body. Its extreme 
opposite was Origen’s idea of pre-eatstence, which had 
still many adherents in the fourth century, but fell 
more and more into discredit, until, finally, it was 
expressly condemned at the Synod of Constantinople, 
A.D. 553. According to this doctrine, all souls were 
created at once by God along with the upper world, 
and fell successively into the lower world and into 
their bodies. The middle view—an expedient of per- 
plexity—was the creatian, which gradually gained 
eround all through the fourth century, and can be 
characterised as the most widespread, at least in the 
West, from the beginning of the fifth. It taught that 
God was ever creating souls and planting them in the 
embryos. The East contented itself with disowning 
Origen’s theory. Augustine, the greatest theologian 
of the West, was unable to come to any fixed views 
regarding the origin of the soul.’ If we are to reach 
any intelligible conception we must abandon the old 
category of substance, and accept the new category 
of subject as regards the soul. Or, to use another 
contrast, our view must be dynamic and not static : 
we must think of the soul, not as a fixed thing but as 
a progressive activity. Much would be gained if 
everywhere in the New Testament where psyche is 
used, the term were rendered life, and not soul. We 
can think of a continuity of life from sensibility to 
self-consciousness, and we must not think of soul in 
the embryo as self-consciousness. 

(i) The facts of heredity would give support to 
traducianism, although much modified from Tertul- 
lian’s statement. What is transmitted from parents 
to offspring is not inorganic matter, but organic life 

1 History of Dogma, Eng. trans., iil. pp. 259-60, 


268 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


itself; and as the development of life can be under- 
stood only as directed by mind, not matter and life 
only but mind also seems to be transmitted in how- 
ever rudimentary a form as subconscious. Mental as 
well as physical characteristics are inherited. That 
does not mean that the soul of the older metaphysics, 
the indivisible unity, is transmitted, for the question 
would then arise, does the father or the mother trans- 
mit the soul, or does each contribute a part? To ask 
such a question is the reductio ad absurdum of the 
theory of a soul being begotten as well as a body. 

(11) While the theory of Origen regarding the pre- 
existence of the soul as spirit, and its lapse and 
entrance into the bedy, is a speculative conjecture, 
a mythological fancy one might almost call it, and 
the reproduction of it in modified form by Julius 
Miller’ adds nothing to commend it, yet the idea of 
pre-existence is not to be so easily dismissed. (a) If 
the soul continues after death, did it commence at 
birth, or conception ? We may approach the subject 
first of all from the standpoint of physical science. 
‘There are grades of incarnation,’ says Lodge; 2 ‘the 
most thorough kind is that illustrated by our bodies : 
in them we are incarnate, but probably not even in 
that case is the incarnation complete. It is quite 
credible that our whole and entire personality is never 
terrestrially manifest.’ If this be so, need we assume 
that the soul begins to be when it becomes incarnate, 
or ceases when that incarnation, partial as that may 
be, is ended at death? Again, from the standpoint 
of philosophy or psychology, the relation of the 
brain to thought is not productive, but permissive or 
transmissive, according to William James.? The body 
is the organ of the mind for its self-expression, as the 
instrument is of the musician; but in the one case 
no more than the other is the agent produced by 
the organ, or identical with it. A piano does not 
bring Paderewski into existence, although it may be 


' The Christian Doctrine of Sin, Eng. trans., ii. pp. 857-401. 
* Life and Matter, p. 123. 
* Human Immortality, pp. 32-48, 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 269 


the best medium of his self-expression. James seems 
even in his exposition of this relation of mind to brain 
to commit himself definitely to the idea of pre-exist- 
ence. ‘° Just how the process of transmission may be 
carried on, is indeed unimaginable; but the outer 
relations, so to speak, of the process encourage our 
belief. Consciousness in this process does not have 
to be generated de novo in a vast number of places. 
It exists already behind the scenes, coeval with the 
world. The transmission theory not only avoids in 
this way multiplying miracles, but it puts itself in 
touch with general idealistic philosophy better than 
the production theory does. It should always be 
reckoned a good thing when science and philosophy 
thus meet.’ If the soul or life does not end with 
death, if the incarnation is partial, and there may be 
a reserve of personality for progressive manifestation 
and activity through the body, need it be affirmed 
that the soul begins at birth or conception ? 1 

(b) The poets have been attracted by this idea of 
pre-existence. Wordsworth’s ode, ‘ Intimations of 
Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,’ 
is probably the most familiar expression of that belief : 


‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar. 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 
From God, who is our home: 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy !’ 

1 Thomson inclines to the monistic view, but he does not rule out the 
dualistic on the ground of science. ‘ It is not difficult to find men of scientific 
distinction and noble outlook who are convinced dualists, who believe that 
the psyche is the dominant partner throughout, and a reality that may last 
after the dissolution of partnership. Similarly it is not difficult to find men 
of scientific distinction and noble outlook who are convinced monists, who 
believe that all psychosis has its counterpart in biosis, that increasing complexity 
of organisation has allowed the emergence of an aspect of reality which in 
the simple forms of life is seen only, as it were, in sparks, whereas in man it 
expands into daylight, in some into a more or less perfect day ’ (op. cit., p. 79). 
These views are not so antagonistic as to exclude reconciliation. If ‘ the 
emergence of an aspect of reality,’ the inner life of man, is conditioned by, 





270 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


This idealisation of childhood goes beyond experience ; 
and memories of a previous state are fancy and not fact. 
Less definite, but similar, is the thought of Tennyson : 


‘A soul shall draw from out the vast, 
And strike his being into bounds, 


And, moved thro’ life of lower phase, 
Result in man, be born and think, 
And act and love, a closer link 
Betwixt us and the crowning race.’ 
(In Memoriam, Epilogue.) 

(c) Against the theory of a succession of incarnations 
there may be urged the following considerations. As 
there is no remembrance of that previous state, no 
advantage can be gained from such lessons as might 
have been learned. The realisation of the ideal of 
personality in truth, beauty, blessedness, holiness, 
love, loses its absolute value, if it is but one life in a 
succession of states of existence unrelated for self- 
consciousness. The development towards personality 
in this life loses its significance, if it is only a repetition 
of previous processes, that have left behind no sense 
of gain or loss which can now be used for encourage- 
ment or warning. When to the theory is added the 
Hindu doctrine of Karma, the determination of each 
life by the resultant of the works of the previous life, 
the soul is involved in a bondage from which its one 
desire must be to find relief! Such relief Hinduism 
offers in the soul’s discovery of its identity with 
Brahma, the sense of individuality being but a 
delusion; and Buddhism in Nirvana, non-existence, or 
non-conscious existence, or existence with no definite 
content (whichever be the true interpretation of that 
term). 

(d) The rejection of this theory does not, however, 
exclude the view that the soul may have existed, not, 
it may be, as individually conscious, but as part of 
the universal life pre-existent as created by God, a 
but not itself the result of ‘the increasing complexity of organisation,’ Thom- 
son’s view can be harmonised with Lodge’s and James’. The position — 
which is taken in this volume seems to be quite reconcilable with all the facts 


which science can produce as the data on which we must base our conclusion. 
* See Redemption, Hindu and Christian, by Cave. 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 271 


reserve from which, the conditions for a fresh person 
having otherwise been fulfilled, the individual soul 
may be drawn: or that universal life may even be 
regarded not as created in the same sense as we may 
speak of the creation of matter, but as a communica- 
tion of life under conditions of finitude from the 
fullness of life in God Himself. This second concep- 
tion would give more than a moral and religious 
content to the conception of God’s fatherhood and 
man’s sonship. Men may become the sons of God 
morally and religiously because that relation is already 
potential in this impartation of the life of God even 
in what is described as natural life. Such impartation 
need not be in a single act, but in a continuous process, 
even as we now conceive the creation of the world as 
having been. We could then put the full Christian 
content into Paul’s words at Athens, ‘in Him we live, 
and move, and have our being; as certain even 
of your own poets have said, For we are also His 
offspring’ (Acts xvii. 28). Because the Son was so 
intimately related to the Father, as none of those who 
by His grace alone become fully sons is, He alone had 
the intuition of His pre-existence, the consciousness 
that His relation to the Father was eternal. When 
we become fully sons, it may be the certainty of an 
eternal relation to God will come to us also. To many 
this may seem only idle speculation, but it does offer 
a solution of the problem of the human soul con- 
sonant with the Christian estimate of the value and 
sacredness of man. 

(iii) The theory of creationism in its crude form can 
be dismissed, but it does present a truth which must 
not be ignored. And it is this, that the process of 
creation is continuous; whether the soul comes from 
reserves of already created life, or is imparted from 
the life of God Himself, it 1s God’s activity which 
brings each new personality into existence, not in- 
dependently of, but in concurrence with, the continuous 
evolution of the life already in this world existent. 
We need not suppose a distinct volition on the part 
of God at each conception, but such a permanent 


272 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


relation of this transcendent life and the life already 
immanent in the world that, given the necessary 
conditions in the one, the other at once takes place. 
This saves us from the conclusion, which to many 
seems incongruous, that even when the conception 
of the child is the result of illicit intercourse, of sinful 
passion, God intervenes to create a soul to be attached 
to the body, the life of which is thus begun. He so 
limits His own independent volition, that it is by the 
will of man, from whatever motive, that the initiation 
of a new personality is begun. With all reverence 
we may say that while God’s creative and conserving 
activity does not cease, He makes man a partner in 
His creative purpose, and man may will that another 
life be begun. | 

(6) It is desirable that we should distinguish soul 
in the sense of the promise and potency conceived and 
born, and personality as the product of the whole 
development. To recall Lotze’s distinction,! God 
alone is perfect personality, man is only personality 
in the making. What are the characteristics of per- 
sonality which man in his development should seek 
and strive to acquire ? 

(i) Man is rational as contrasted with animals. In 
the new psychology ” reason is treated as a by-product 
of human development, and all the stress is laid on 
the instincts (self, sex, and herd). Thomson objects 
to this wide use of the term, for what should rather 
be called appetites or impulses, which man has in 
common with the lower animals, and maintains that 
man. has very little in his life corresponding to instincts 
as seen in animals.? His definition of instincts is as 
follows: ‘ There are inborn or hereditary capacities 
for doing apparently clever things—they need no 
learning ; they are shared equally by all members of 
the species, except that there may be differences 
between the two sexes; they are always related to 
particular circumstances which are of vital importance, 


1 Lotze’s Mikrokosmus, Book rx. chap. iv. 
2 See Tansley’s The New Psychology and its Relation to Life. 
3 Op. cit.,-p. 107. 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 2738 


and thus they are apt to be futile if the circumstances 
are slightly altered. . . . Instinctive behaviour con- 
sidered physiologically corresponds to a long chain of 
reflex actions ; but there are facts which suggest that 
in many cases at least, there is dim awareness and a 
strong background of endeavour—in other words, 
cognitive and conative factors.’! Instinct is not to 
be regarded as either ‘ a rudimentary form of intelli- 
gence’ or due to ‘ the lapsing of intelligence in regard 
to a routine often performed.’ It is another path 
of mental development than intelligence. Among 
animals, however, we may observe intelligent be- 
haviour also. ‘It differs from instinctive behaviour 
in requiring to be learned, in not being as such 
hereditary, in varying notably among individuals of 
the same species, and in being plastic.’2 Animals 
seem to be able to form associations of impressions, 
e.g. a dog who has been thrashed for stealing a bone 
associates the pain of the thrashing with the taking 
of the bone. Man alone has reason. He can form 
general ideas from his particular perceptions, such as 
man, etc. He has categories of thought, such as 
substance, subject, quality, number, cause, and law. 
He can thus bring an intelligible unity into the mani- 
fold of his experience. Because he can reason, his 
thoughts can pass from one datum of his knowledge 
to another. Some thinkers have distinguished reason- 
ing as the activity of the understanding from reason in 
the narrower sense of the word, the capacity for ideas 
which unify knowledge, and ideals which harmonise 
life. Kant distinguished the pure or the mere reason 
from the practical reason, which we generally speak 
of as conscience. After the data of experience have 
been connected together in the intuitions of tume and 
space, and by the categories of the understanding, 
quantity, quality, relation, etc., knowledge is unified 
by the ideas of the reason, the world as a totality, self 
as a unity, and God as the possibility of all existence. 
It is true that he held that these ideas of the reason 
were only regulative, but not constitutive of know- 
1 Op. cit., pp. 61-62. 2 Pp. 63-64. 
Ss 


274 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


ledge, namely, that as no datum of experience could 
be claimed for these ideas, we must not assume any 
reality corresponding to them. Sut it is sheer scepti- 
cism to assert that what is a necessity for thought 
is no more than a possibility of existence. Kant’s 
successors, the German idealists, assumed, and truly, 
that as man thinks, if he thinks as he must think, 
he does not get further away from but nearer truth. 
Kor man as thinking there is an end, a goal, an ideal, 
iruth, to reach which he gathers knowledge and 
exercises judgment. We cannot say that truth is 
correspondence between our thought and reality, for 
we know reality only as the content of our conscious- 
ness, and so cannot-test the correspondence. It is 
rather the coherence of all the parts of our knowledge 
in a whole of thought, which makes reality intelligible 
to us. There can be no doubt that the three ideas of 
the reason do give such coherence to the world on 
the one hand and self on the other, and the relation 
of the one to the other in God as the final unity. 
Despite this inclination of the new psychology to treat 
reasoning In man as a comparatively insignificant 
by-product of the organic process, we are warranted 
in affirming that. man is rational personality capable 
of realising the ideal of truth, of knowing God, and of 
understanding the world and self more fully because 
of that knowledge. 

* (11) Between cognition and conation lies feeling, often 
the result of the first, and the occasion for the second. 
Man feels pleasure or pain; he hopes for the one, he 
fears the other; he likes what brings the one, he dis- 
likes what causes the other; he seeks the one, he 
shuns the other. Into the psychological niceties we 
need not now enter. We may, however, distinguish 
three phases of man’s feeling: the sensuous, the 
_ aesthetic, and the spiritual. The senswous is the 
satisfaction of man’s physical necessities, his animal 
appetites, his individual desires (as for wealth, fame, 
power). That need not sink to the sensual, although 
it fails to be spiritual. To use the distinction Paul 
makes, it may be sarkinos, and not sarkikos. Such 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 275 


satisfaction we may call happiness, and its opposite 
misery. The aesthetic is the satisfaction of man’s 
sense of beauty. That is transitional from the sen- 
suous to the spiritual. Colour, shape, sound are its 
sensuous material; there must be such a unity-in- 
variety, such a blending into oneness of the manifold 
for the senses, that there is repose and not disturbance 
of feeling. ‘There are organic conditions, no doubt, 
for such aesthetic satisfaction, and these we need not 
discuss. But this is not all, although probably those 
who clamour for art for art’s sake might claim that 
it is all. There belongs to beauty also expressiveness. 
An exact imitation of a beautiful object will not 
satisfy the aesthetic sense, unless through picture or 
statue or symphony the artist expresses not only 
what is individual to himself, but what is universally 
human. Art is the expression through the sensuous 
of the spiritual, the image which conveys the idea. 
This does not mean that the expression of common- 
place thought, shallow sentiment, is beautiful. But 
that the beautiful must have meaning to have worth 
as such. There are realities of the spiritual which 
the senses cannot express ; and here art must become 
symbolical, conveying the reality, the influence of 
what it cannot express. A symphony may bring the 
soul into a holy of holies. This sense of beauty is also 
one of the marks of God the potter on man the clay, 
which He has made, and not marred, as a vessel of 
honour. The spiritual satisfaction is in the realisa- 
tion of the ideals, in the possession of Him who is the 
reality of all these ideals. This may be called blessed- 
ness in distinction from the happiness that the grati- 
fication of lower, even although legitimate, interests 
brings. This spiritual satisfaction may include the 
aesthetic: there is a beauty of truth, the harmony of 
all knowledge; there is a beauty of holiness, the 
harmony of all endeavour; there is a beauty of love, 
the harmony of personal relations; there is a beauty 
of God, the harmony of all perfections of truth, 
holiness, and love. A man lives as made by God, 
and for likeness to and fellowship with God fully 


276 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


only as he cherishes beauty and experiences blessed- 
ness, whether happiness be his lot or not. Jesus had 
a sense of the beauty of nature; in His own teaching 
He was the artist in imagery and words; His life 
was a masterpiece in the art of living; and blessed 
was the life that ended on the Cross, for to do the 
Father’s will was His meat and drink. 

(iii) Man acts as well as thinks and feels; and 
although his action is free, it is under law, it is a 
means to an end. In other words, man is moral. 
We do not only know our own acts as facts; we judge 
them as to their quality, as right or wrong, as good 
or bad. The use of these two sets of terms indicates 
that there are two standards of judgment applied, 
although it is only by reflection that we are led to 
recognise their difference. When we call an action 
right or wrong, our standard is a rule, law, or norm, 
to which the action conforms, or which it violates, 
keeps, or breaks. When we call an action good or 
bad we think of an end, or purpose, the attainment 
of which it helps or hinders. We usually think of 
conscience as an inward law or norm, which goes 
beyond the outward law of human society, and yet 
only partially and inadequately reproduces the law 
of God. This, however, is not the highest conception 
of morality. God has a purpose or end for man, of 
which morality as conformity to law is an essential 
part, but not the necessary whole. The human good, 
which God wills for man, includes truth, happiness, 
beauty, blessedness, as well as holiness or moral 
perfection. While we may for one of the higher 
interests of life endure pain, and even inflict pain, 
yet we do judge an action wrong as well as bad which 
needlessly causes pain to ourselves or to others. The 
conduct of the man who wantonly defaces beauty 
and exposes ugliness is also wrong and bad. To 
pursue truth through knowledge is both right and 
good. Christ has taught us that love is the fulfilling 
of the law, and love aims at the whole good of self 
and of others according to the whole will of God for 
man. Although love is not under law, yet it is not 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 277 


without law, for if we want an end we must use the 
means adequate and appropriate. Moral law is the 
necessary means towards the human good, but it is 
not a mere means, as the good is a moral good, and 
includes necessarily moral conduct and character. 
Just as conscience does not completely and perfectly | 
reproduce the law of God, but is only gradually gaining — 
the full and clear knowledge of that law, the moral 
perfection God Himself is, and wills for man, so the | 
good for man is only gradually being disclosed in | 
human. history; that process is for the Christian the / 
coming of the Kingdom of God. To this theme we’ 

must returiy ity subsequent chapters in which we shall 
deal with the Christian life and Christian society. 

(b) Morality presupposes freedom, man can do what 
he ought to do. That generalisation, however, goes 
beyond experience. A man’s reach does always 
exceed his grasp. His ideal; 1f-at all worthy, excels 
his achievement... We must allow time for develop- 
ment. A man is morally blameworthy only for the 
good he could do, and did not do, not for the whole 
good which he can conceive, but cannot yet attain. 
As Kant! taught, freedom is a postulate of the moral 
consciousness as the condition of obedience to the 
categorical imperative of duty. This freedom, how- 
ever, is always a limited freedom, but also an expand- 
ing freedom. By the right or good action a man not 
only expands his grasp, but he also extends his reach ; 
the categorical imperative gains a wider and higher 
content in the measure in which it is obeyed. Will a 
man’s freedom ever fully correspond in its exercise 
with his duty ? Kant’s answer was: not in this life ; 
and therefore for him immortality was another pos- 
tulate of the moral consciousness. We must be 
careful, however, in stating this postulate. To say 
that man will survive death because he has failed 
in this life to become what he ought to have become 
does not sound a convincing argument. What we 
should state is that the good for man is so great that 


1 The Critique of the Practical Reason, Book 1. pataite ii. See Abbot’s Kant’s 
Lheory of Ethics, pp. 206-80. | 


278 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


this life does not afford either the time or the condi- 
tions for its full realisation. So put, it is a valid 
argument for immortality. Another assumption that 
has been often made by the moral consciousness also 
goes beyond experience: it is this, that the good are 
happy, and the bad miserable, as God in His provi- 
dence always conforms circumstances to character. 
This is the conviction expressed in the first Psalm ; 
the problem with which the book of Job wrestles, and 
for which the prophecy in Isaiah li. of the Servant 
of God who saves by His sufferings finds the solution 
in the sufferings of the righteous. A man may here 
lose happiness, and find blessedness, nay, for the sake 
of blessedness he may surrender happiness, and find 
that ‘ sweet are the uses of adversity.’ Kant, how- 
ever, tried a solution on lower ground. The moral 
consciousness, he argues, postulates the existence of. 
God, who, as the Ruler of nature, will, if not in this 
life, yet in the next, bring about the harmony of 
circumstance and character. To this solution two 
objections hold. A man can rise from happiness to 
blessedness, and thus even now find the problem 
solved, although he may hope for a still fuller solution, 
when man attains a life in which sensuous pleasure 
or pain exists no more. As an argument for the exist- 
ence of God it is inadequate, and artificial. The whole 
nature of man bears witness that God is. 

(iv) In such an analysis of human personality it 
is impossible to treat each aspect separately without 
some reference to or anticipation of another aspect. 
Thus morality presupposes society. For, although 
man has a duty to himself to love himself, yet that 
self is an unreal abstraction apart from other selves, 
and it is in relation to other selves that morality is 
for the most part realised. Whatever rudimentary 
self-feeling consciousness may begin with,’ the con- 
sciousness of the world around and of others comes 
before self-consciousness, such as a reflective morality 
which distinguishes duties to self and duties to others 
involves. Man belongs to the gregarious animals, 

1 See Lotze’s Philosophy of Religion, Eng. trans., pp. 55-8. 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 279 


and in him survives the herd instinct or impulse. 
It is tribal custom which is the beginning of morality 
before the individual conscience has emerged. What 
is usually done is what ought to be done, and fear of 
the displeasure or hope for the favour of the other 
clansmen or the chief is the motive of so doing. 
The organic basis of human affection is the relation 
of the sexes, and of parents to children; and this is 
anticipated among the lower animals.! It is not at. 
all probable that human society began with pro- 
miscuity, but with monogamy, again also anticipated 
among some animals.2 How the family expanded 
into the tribe, and tribes combined in nations, and 
nations were subjugated in empires, is an interesting 
story which cannot here be retold. What must here 
be asserted is that the making of woman was not 
an after-thought of God’s, as the more primitive story 
of the Creation in Gen. tu. 18-25 states, but that from 
the beginning God made man male and female that 
they might multiply and replenish the earth (Gen. 1. 
27-28). Man by his very nature is social. The ideal 
of social relations is love, which is not feeling only, 
but thought and deed as well; it is, as has already 
been shown, a judgment of value, a sentiment of 
interest, a purpose of good. Human persons have 
worth for one another, suffer or rejoice together, seek 
the good the one of the other. The individualism 
which last century invaded morals and religion no 
less than economics and politics is a misrepresenta- 
tion of human personality, which is essentially social, 
and can fully realise itself only in society. The 
teaching of Jesus (Matt. xvi. 25) that a man finds his 
life only as he loses it has its confirmation in the latest 
conclusions of sociological inquiry that there is no 
real conflict of egoism and altruism, but that in- 
dividuation and socialisation go para passu, that a 
man becomes most himself as he lives most fully 
and freely in and with others.® 


1 See The Ascent of Man, by Henry Drummond. 
2 What is Man? by J. Arthur Thomson, pp. 35-9. 
3 This is admirably worked out in Community, by M‘Iver. 


930 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(v) Human personality is only partially realising 
its ideals, truth, happiness, beauty, blessedness, holi- 
ness, love, now; but as it is progressively realising 
them, it postulates its own continuance in order to 
realise them completely. Must this postulate remain 
without any confirmation? Are there any other 
arguments for immortality? It has already been 
shown that intimate as is the relation of body and 
soul, it is not a productive relation, and life may, and 
probably does, transcend its material organ. Physical 
science cannot prove the fact of immortality, but it 
cannot forbid the hope. While we cannot to-day 
argue as did the philosophers ! formerly, for immor- 
tality from the nature of the soul as an indivisible 
entity ; yet the development of personality in ‘ self- 
knowledge, self-reverence, self-control,’ in clearer 
consciousness and fuller command of self, in greater 
detachment from outward circumstances, and greater 
concentration on the inner life, at least suggests that 
there is being created a permanent reality, less and 
less dependent on the world and the body, and so 
capable of continuance under different conditions 
from those of this present incarnation. We may set 
aside the judicial argument that there must be a 
future life to readjust the injustices and inequalities 
of the present; if we take the position that judgment 
is not a future event, but a present process, that a 
man already here and now is reaping as he has sown. 
The holy man is blessed, whether his lot be happy or 
not, and the wicked is cursed even in his prosperity, 
for he is losing what alone has an enduring value. 
With such qualification, the argument is valid, for 
we may assume that in the next life the whole good 
of man will be realised with more helps and fewer 
hindrances than here and now. One of the most 
persuasive reasons for the hope of immortality is love, 
its value postulates its duration. ‘That the personal 
relationship, which has developed through many years 
of mutual devotion, service, and sacrifice, should be 

1 For instance, Berkeley : Of the Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 141; 
Fraser’s Selections from Berkeley, pp. 131-2. 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 281 


severed by death is incredible if this be a universe 
in which values are conserved. All in the last analysis 
depends on faith in God. If God is, and is as faith 
believes and trusts Him to be—Father, then immor- 
tality is sure. Even in the Old Testament the hope 
dawns that God’s companions cannot be death’s 
victims, and that hope Jesus confirmed when he said 
that God is ‘the God not of the dead, but of the 
living ’ (Mark xii. 27). 
(vi) The crown of manhood is religion, for in it man 
raises himself above and reaches beyond the world 
and himself to believe and trust in, and to surrender 
himself to God. Lowly as may have been the be- 
ginnings of religion in the human race, it is in its 
highest form, Christian faith, hope, love, that its 
true meaning and full worth are to be seen. While 
it was at one time held that there were savage tribes 
without religion, it is now generally recognised that 
religion is universal in mankind, and necessary to 
manhood.!.. Human personality is completed only in 
dependence on, and submission to God, and faith as 
man’s receptivity for, and responsiveness to God so 
unites man to the ultimate source, the essential 
reality, the final purpose of himself and his world, 
that only in God can the course of man’s aspiration 
and endeavour reach its goal and reward. While 
religion does answer the questions of the mind, and 
meet the longings of the heart, it is mainly concerned 
with the needs of the life. It is the reply from the 
heights to the cry from the depths, Who will show 
us any good? The good has been variously con- 
ceived; in the first phase of religion, man seeks 
earthly goods by the aid of the spirits or gods; ata 
higher phase he seeks divine support in the struggle 
for moral goodness: this is taken up and changed 
from struggle into victory in the highest phase, where 
man’s hunger and thirst for the living God 1s satisfied 
by the realised presence and experienced communion 
of God Himself. Religion casts many roots into the 
human personality, emotion, imagination, intellect, 
1 Introduction to the History of Religion, by F. B. Jevons, p. 7. 


282 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


desire, aspiration, purpose; its very core, however, 
is what many would call the mystical experience, but 
as mysticism is an ambiguous term, and connotes 
many experiences which belong to the byways rather 
than the highway to God, we had better call it the 
spiritual experience, the immediate contact and the 
intimate communion with God, direct dependence 
on Him, and entire submission to Him, in whom ‘ we 
live and move, and have our being.’ This relation to 
God is mutual; God gives Himself to those who, 
seeking, find Him; nay, rather, their search is in re- 
sponse to His approach and appeal. Religion thus 
implies revelation: there is real revelation wherever 
there is sincere religion. But as the revelation with 
which this volume is concerned is redemptive, con- 
ditioned by the fact of sin and pain, the discussion 
of the subject must be reserved for a later chapter. 

(7) We have now gained a vantage ground from 
which to attack a problem which had to be left 
partially unsolved in the previous chapter. 

(i) Against the Christian belief in God as personal 
and as Father, it is often argued that man is so in- 
significant a portion of the Universe, since his home is 
but a speck, and his history but a span, that to think 
of God as related to man so intimately is an audacity 
of thought and an arrogance of feeling. But the 
same objection would hold against any kind of belief 
in God, even against any sort of interpretation of the 
universe which the mind of man can offer, against 
science and philosophy no less than theology, for the 
one uses the categories of the human understanding 
and the other the ideas of the human reason. If man 
be so insignificant, what presumption to suppose 
that his science can in any sense reach truth, his 
philosophy interpret reality! That man knows at all 
raises him at once above this insignificance. He is 
not merely one object among many other objects ; 
he is the subject for whom these objects not only exist, 
but can be made intelligible. In all his science and 
philosophy he is finding mind in the Universe; he 
can and must conceive the immeasurable energy as 


RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD AND MAN 283 


will, and the marvellous law, order, adaptation as 
expressing intelligence. It is he who thinks himself 
insignificant because he has discovered the vastness, 
the wonder, and the glory of the Universe, and he can 
compare himself with it. He contemplates two sub- 
limities, the starry heavens above, and the moral 
law within. If the first makes him feel insignificant, 
the second discloses his own value.t— Even physically 
man is not insignificant, for by discovering the laws 
he can control the forces of nature. The snow-clad 
Alps are in view as these words are being written ; 
but not only have men scaled these heights by climb- 
ing, they have carried railways almost to their 
summits. Still less insignificant is man, who can 
not only make the world intelligible and available 
for his need, but can cherish ideals of truth, beauty, 
holiness, love, and amid sorrow and with struggle 
can realise them increasingly. These things cannot 
be numbered, measured, weighed, and are incom- 
parable with material reality in time and space. A 
mother’s love or a martyr’s sacrifice has value, be 
the dimensions and the duration of the physical 
Universe what they may. Man, as far as our know- 
ledge reaches, is the consummation of the cosmic 
evolution ; and his progress continues and completes 
that process, and gives it a meaning and a worth 
it would not otherwise have. In man the Universe 
comes to self-consciousness, and in some measure to 
self-direction, and in his religion that consciousness 
reaches, because it is raised to the consciousness of 
that reality which is in all, and through all, and over 
all, even God Himself. 

(ii) If God’s Fatherhood means, as has been already 
shown, not that man in his pride lifts himself to 
claim equality with God, but that God in His grace 
stoops to raise man into fellowship with and likeness 
to Himself, then that relation, offered in grace and 
accepted in faith, seems to be the most fitting com- 
pletion of the Universe. God has been giving Himself 
as Creator in matter, life, mind, and finding Himself 


1 Cf. Psalms viii. and xix. 


284 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


in the common life of love as Father with mankind 
as His family. Within this consummating creative 
act of God the personality of Jesus Christ is not only 
supreme, but originative. It is in Him and through 
Him that this family of God is constituted. The 
place of man in the universe warrants our thinking 
of Him in this filial relation to God, and the place of 
Jesus Christ in human history warrants our accepting 
His convincing testimony, not in word only, but in 
hife also, as authoritative in regard to all that this 
relation means. As this chapter has tried to show, 
neither science nor philosophy contradicts the con- 
ception of man, or challenges the estimate of man 
of the Christian revelation. Whatever other diffi- 
culties for our thought the facts of the world and of 
life offer, we may approach them with the confidence 
that in Christ’s revelation of God and redemption 
of man we can, if we will, find the solution of problems 
which apart from Him reason could not so adequately 
solve. We must now address ourselves to the most 
serious difficulty for theistic belief or Christian faith : 
the problem of evil—pain and sin. 


CHAPTER III 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 


We have already discussed in a previous chapter 
the opposition which some thinkers have discovered 
between God’s almightiness and God’s all-goodness, 
and tried to show that we are not forced, as has been 
too rashiy concluded, to abandon the one or the other 
attribute of God. The argument was there left in- 
complete inasmuch as the problem of evil could not 
be fully discussed until the relation of God to the 
world had been dealt with, as it has been in the 
previous chapter. We must first of all distinguish 
evil as physical and evil as moral, or as pain and as 
sin. While they are closely related, they must be 
dealt with separately, as there 1s pain in the universe 
which is not connected with sin. Facts do not allow 
the solution that physical evil. was consequent on, 
or anticipatory of moral evil; for physical evil 
existed before man was made, and before sin entered 
into the world; and the view of foreknowledge and 
fore-ordination advanced in a previous chapter forbids 
what theologians formerly assumed, that God, knowing 
that man would sin, so created the Universe that the 
appropriate punishment for sin, as soon as it emerged, 
was provided. Jesus has once for all forbidden the 
assumption of an exclusive and inevitable connection 
of physical and moral evil (Luke xii. 4-5, John ix. 
2, 3). As we shall show, there are some physical 
evils which have served for man’s personal discipline 
and development, and there are others which are the 
consequences of sin, although the severest and surest 
penalty of sin is inward, and not outward. Never- 
theless, a separate treatment is necessary to avoid 


confusion of thought and perversion of judgment. 
285 


286 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


. 


(1) We must first deal with what was prior in time, 
and is much more widely diffused, as 1t embraces the 
lower animals as well as man—physical evil. 

(i) What impresses us, as we go out into the world, 
is the abundance of life, and its variety. On the 
bare mountain-side, wherever a little soil can rest, 
seeds fall and plants spring up; between the flag- 
stones of a street the tender blade of grass shows itself. 
Even if we may not endow the vegetable realm with 
any sensibility, the luxuriance, beauty, and fragrance 
which greet us, wherever the physical conditions give 
what seems even the least opportunity, suggest that 
life is good. When Gray wrote in his Elegy, 


‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air,’ 


he wrote bad science; for the beauty and the frag- 
rance of the flower exist not for man’s delight alone, 
but serve a vital function for the plant, as attracting 
the insects which are ministers of its life in securing 
its fertilisation. In the animal realm, in the activities 
of bird and beast, and even insect, are we guilty of 
the pathetic fallacy if we detect signs of the joy of 
living ? We do encounter decay and death, struggle 
and pain; but if we examine all the facts we are 
justified in our conclusion that suffering and cruelty 
do not so abound as a misunderstood Darwinism has 
led many to assume. 

Even if one animal inflicts pain and death on 
another, we are anthropomorphising if we speak of 
cruelty, for cruelty is the conscious and voluntary 
infliction of pain, and that we are not justified in 
ascribing to the lower animals. ‘ The struggle for 
existence’ has no resemblance to a human battle- 
field; ‘the survival of the fittest’ does not mean 
always the violent removal of the unfit. The living 
organism which cannot adapt itself to its environment 
may die, and is not necessarily killed by another, 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 287 


and the elimination of the unfit is a condition of 
organic progress. Nature is not nearly as ‘red in 
tooth and claw’ as highly imaginative writers may 
depict it. There are many species of animals which 
are herbivorous. That many species are carnivorous 
and prey upon other species, proves neither ferocious 
cruelty on the part of the devourer, nor awful suffering 
on the part of the devoured. As the animals which 
are the prey of others do not remember past dangers 
or anticipate future ones, their lives are not lives of 
constant terror. The fear of danger, with consequent 
flight if it is possible, comes suddenly upon them. 
When caught it is even probable that such sensibility 
as they possess is lessened. When we see a cat 
playing with a mouse, we must not charge the cat 
with the cruelty which we should ascribe to a human 
being, nor think that the mouse is suffering as we 
should in the same position. So fertile are most 
living organisms, that the earth would very soon be 
overstocked with life, were not this constant process 
of removal going on. Can we say that a few long lives 
would be a higher good than many short lives ? 
Death is thus the minister of life, and life more 
abundant.! There is struggle for the life of others 
as well as for self among animals. In recent years 
several writers, among whom may specially be men- 
tioned Henry Drummond and Prince Kropotkin, have 
shown us nature as not only or chiefly a battlefield, 
but as a home and a workshop, in which are seen 
parental solicitude and mutual co-operation. In- 
stinct even guides insects in a life with and for others. 
What a marvel of concerted effort is a beehive! 
What an idyll of family life is a bird’s nest! Even 
a beast otherwise timid will fight for her young, and 
the she-wolf grows fiercer when she has cubs, If 
Drummond was sometimes poet rather than man of 
science in finding love in the process of evolution, 
as the term should be reserved for conscious and 
voluntary affection towards others, Huxley did give 
a distorted view in the Romanes Lecture when he 
1 See A Study of Religion, by Jas. Martineau, il. pp. 58-76, 87-91. 


288 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


found altogether another law in the cosmic process 
than in the moral progress of mankind. Care for 
others as well as care for self has been a necessary 
factor in the preservation and improvement of living 
organisms. Facts as they are do not warrant the 
optimist’s contention that this is the best of all 
possible worlds, if universal happiness be the test of 
what is best. There is pain, much pain, great pain 
among animals as well as men, even if we allow that 
animals are much less sensitive than men. We 
cannot find an adequate solution of this problem, 
unless we apply some other test than that of happiness. 

(ii) To these general considerations there may be 
added a summary of the statement of a man of 
science on this theme, Prof. Jas. Y. Simpson, in his 
book on The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature.} 
He offers with ample illustrations four conclusions : 

(a) ‘ The comparative study of the nervous system 
in the animal kingdom seems to show a varying 
capacity for pain which in the highest animals even 
is very different from the capacity in savage man ; 
and as we descend the animal scale, the capacity 
lessens.’ ‘ Susceptibility to pain reaches a maximum 
in the case of those who have the greatest capacity 
of mental power... .’ ‘In relation to the alleged 
cruelty of the struggle many additional data have 
been collected tending to show that imsensibility to 
pain attends the most characteristic methods of feral 
warfare and execution.’ 

(b) ‘Kxamination of the conditions of organic 
progress shows that it has always been the outcome 
of a certain saving discontent. Progress follows 
acute organic dissatisfaction.’ 

(c) ‘No account of the struggle for existence can 
pretend to be complete which fails to take notice of 
the mutual service or self-sacrifice that enter into 
it so objectively.’ 

(d) ‘ When we have estimated the real worth of 
the charges of cruelty against nature, have realised 
the price of progress, and considered the place of 

1 Pp, 131-42. 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 289 


altruism, we may return to ponder the fundamental 
place of suffering and of service in the world... .’ 
‘ Sacrifice and suffering are means for perfecting the 
adjustment of living things to the world around them, 
and, as so increasing the sum of life, are a good.’ 

(2) In dealing with human suffermg, we may 
distinguish three sources—nature, society, and the 
constitution of the individual man.} 

(1) There are great catastrophes of nature—earth- 
quake, volcano, flood, tempest, famine—which bring 
widespread misery in their train. It may be that 
in such calamities no individual suffers more than 
he might from disease and that the number of deaths 
falls short of the number of preventable deaths within 
a year in a civilised community. What attracts 
attention to these tragedies, and makes many persons 
challenge the ways of God’s providence, is that they 
are unusual, that often they come suddenly, that a 
large number of persons is involved in the one ex- 
perience of pain. These outbreaks of nature, although 
they are often cited in impeachments of God’s good- 
ness, or almightiness, do not involve any greater 
problem than do disease and death, so familiar that 
most men are not moved to think about them at all. 
Regarding these assaults of nature on man’s safety 
and happiness, two things can be said, ‘in relief of 
doubt ’ and in support of faith. 

(a) First of all, these catastrophes are the results 
of physical forces in accord with natural laws in an 
order of nature which is, with only such exceptions, 
uniformly beneficent. Men ask an explanation of 
these occurrences, just because they are infrequent 
and unexpected. The ordinary course of nature, 
which is ever bringing good to man, passes unheeded : 
and thus an altogether disproportionate estimate is 
formed of the extent of physical evil resulting from 
nature. If men were as grateful for all the good that 
nature brings to them daily, as they are rebellious 
against any evil, they would admit that in com- 
parison to the good the evil is almost negligible. 

1 See The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, by A. M. Fairbairn, pp. 136-50. 

< 


290 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


But it may be retorted, why did God not create an 
order of nature wholly beneficent? This is a vain 
question, for what we can imagine and desire may 
be beyond the bounds of possibility. So far as our 
science can penetrate the mystery we seem to be 
confronted with an impossibility in the very nature 
of reality itself; and God’s omnipotence, as has 
already been shown, is that He can do what can be 
done. 

(b) We are not, however, left with unrelieved 
mystery, for in the second place it is just the less 
beneficent aspect of nature which has had most 
significance for man. It is in his struggle with 
nature, to understand its laws, and to control its 
forces, that man has developed in knowledge, strength, 
and skill, in sympathy and co-operation with his 
fellows. If fully developed human personality, and 
not happiness merely, be the end, a justification can 
be found fer nature’s seeming hardness to man. As 
it is also in the struggle with nature that men are 
drawn together, society is at least partially (for we 
must recognise other factors) a product of this struggle. 
Take, for instance, the earthquake in Japan; it has 
diverted the energies of that able and ambitious people 
into channels of reconstruction instead of preparation 
for war, and it has evoked such a spontaneous and 
generous sympathy in other nations, especially the 
United States of America, as to have improved inter- 
national relations. It has been said with truth that 
man languishes under nature’s motherly smile, and 
prospers under her stepmotherly frown. We should 
not say that these calamities are * special providences ’ 
of God, else the first consideration offered would fall 
to the ground, and the difficulty for faith would be 
increased, and not relieved. But we may say that 
God has so made the world, and so made man, that 
man can wrest his best out of what seems the world’s 
worst. Without any irreverence we may modify the 
saying that man’s extremity of suffering, pain, or 
loss is also his opportunity, or God’s through him, 
of wisdom, courage, generosity, and sacrifice. 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 291 


(ii) Just as the order of nature, generally beneficent, 
sometimes involves physical evils, even so the order 
of society. And asin nature our attention is attracted 
to the injuries we suffer, and not the benefits we 
receive, so we complain of social wrongs much more 
loudly than we praise, if ever we do, social good. The 
debt that the individual man owes to society is in- 
calculable. Robinson Crusoe is not a picture of what 
man would be without society, for he came to the 
desert island with resources of manhood which the 
society he had left behind had already conferred upon 
him. So helpless is human infancy that no babe 
would survive, were he not born into a family. Lay- 
ing all proper stress on that fact, we must admit that 
society has been an agent of misery as well as of 
happiness for man. ‘ Man’s inhumanity to man 
makes countless thousands mourn’; and still ‘ more 
harm is wrought by want of thought than even want 
of heart.’ Ignorance, indifference, indolence are re- 
sponsible for more misery and suffering than even 
selfishness, greed, or cruelty as conscious motives of 
inaction or action. Sins of omission are more abun- 
dant even than sins of commission. Here the physical 
evil is due to moral evil. This misery or pain is a 
constant and not a futile challenge to moral endea- 
vour; ignorance is corrected by knowledge, sympathy 
takes the place of indifference, and indolence is 
stirred to activity. Selfishness, greed, and cruelty 
are condemned by the common conscience, and even 
the transgressors are often made ashamed, and 
brought to repentance and amendment. Thus the 
evil in society becomes, even as the struggle with 
nature, a condition of man’s self-discipline and self- 
development, and of more intimate relations with 
his fellows. Great as are the wrongs which in society 
men inflict upon one another, and urgent as is the 
need of and imperative the call to social reform, who, 
in view of man’s social progress, especially the de- 
velopment of his social conscience, can maintain that 
the balance is more injury than benefit ? God is not 
responsible directly for what men do in society ; and 


292 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


yet we may find a token of His good purpose in that 
He has so made man, that he is not only capable, 
but has need of such intimate relations with his 
fellows. Heredity and environment, the two social 
factors in man’s development, are often channels of 
evil, but still more channels of good, else there had 
not been any progress; and they could not be the 
one without the other. That a man may by his 
conduct inflict pain on his descendants or his neigh- 
bours, or confer good, is a means of moral discipline, 
restraining from the course that is wrong, and con- 
straining to the way that is right. Thus the problem 
of physical evil, of which the channel is society, is 
insoluble apart from the solution of the moral problem. 
A consideration which bears on the present situation 
especially may be added. There is a tendency to 
hypostatise, almost to personalise society, and to 
talk about social wrongs and social reforms abstract- 
edly, apart from individual responsibility for the 
wrongs and individual obligation for the reforms. 
What causes social wrongs is individual sin, and 
what can bring about social reforms is individual 
righteousness and goodness, acting corporately, as 
the wrongs are often too great to be reformed by 
individual effort. 

(iii) In the constitution of the individual man 
physical evil comes as disease and at last as death. 
(a) As disease is largely due to man’s disregard of the 
laws of health, sometimes even to conduct of which 
disease is the penalty, and as much of it is com- 
municated from one person to another, it is so far 
avoidable by knowledge and care. Much is the result 
of conditions for which society is responsible. The 
connection between disease and sin is most evident 
in the venereal diseases, which can be prevented only 
by chastity. Many plagues can be avoided by atten- 
tion to sanitation. By notification and segregation 
the spread of infectious diseases can be arrested. 
That modern pestilence, cancer, is probably due to 
unnatural habits of life in respect of food and exercise, 
and we may hope that as the causation is discovered, 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 298 


so the remedy will be successfully applied. Did men 
know how to live normally, and did they act as they 
knew, the greater part of ‘ the ills that flesh is heir 
to’ (a phrase which expresses a mistaken view of 
the matter) would cease. We are not entitled to say 
that God wills disease. When all this has been duly 
weighed in our judgment, we must admit that there 
does exist an amount and an acuteness of suffering 
which remains inexplicable. All who love must have 
been racked with grief as they witnessed the pain, 
sometimes excruciating, of a loved one. It may be 
_ said that pain is a warning of physical danger; but 
why such a terrible warning in diseases in which 
escape seems now impossible? Human science may 
yet discover and remove the mysterious causes of 
these maladies, which fall on their victims without 
any apparent fault. But why the lesson should be 
learned at so great a cost is a question which can be 
answered only partially. To witness the perfecting 
of the character of the sufferer under such an affliction, 
and of those who by sympathy share the suffering in 
mind, if not in body, is to find some relief of the 
burden. The greatness of the soul is often most fully 
disclosed on the bed of pain under the shadow of 
death, and a home is hallowed for the after years by 
sharing such an experience. As the Son of God was 
Himself perfected to be the Saviour of men by His 
sufferings (Heb. ul. 18), as He learned obedience by 
the things which He thus suffered (v. 8), so do, those 
whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren (1. 11) 
become partakers of His perfection by treading the 
same via dolorosa. 

(b) To dismiss the problem of death by describing 
it as a natural necessity, since a living organism 
must needs be dissolved, is to ignore the fact that 
man is not merely a living organism, and _ that, 
therefore, death means something more for him than 
for other animals. We know that death was in. the 
world before man was made, and had sinned. Death 
as a physical event is not the consequence of sin; and 
when Paul tells us that ‘ the wages of sin is death ’ 


294 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(Rom. vi. 23), meaning as he doubtless did the 
physical event, we cannot follow him. But if by 
death is meant a personal experience on occasion of 
the physical event we may agree that for mankind 
generally death has been invested with a dread which 
holds many in bondage (Heb. ii. 15), and is regarded 
as doom because of sin (1 Cor. xv. 56). Death may 
be, for man as he is, a moral and a spiritual crisis, or 
judgment. It is only flippaney to dismiss this as 
superstition, for, as has been shown in a previous 
chapter, Christ in His agony in Gethsemane and His 
desolation on the Cross seems so to have regarded 
death, because in His vicarious love He made Himself 
one with ‘mankind sinners.’ Deliverance from the 
fear of death belongs to the salvation which Christ 
offers to mankind, and in His resurrection He has 
brought immortality to light, as He has brought men 
by His grace into the eternal life with God. Because 
we rejoice in His light, we must not ignore how dark 
are the shadows that apart from Him fall on death. 
It is the hope of immortality which scatters its shadows. 
Apart even from this fear of death, where there is 
not the hope in Christ death must often appear the 
arrest of a mental, moral, and spiritual development. 
It means the severance of personal relationships, 
hallowed by love, and that ideals cherished and 
striven for have remained unrealised. To go home, 
as did John Clifford, having fought the good fight, 
having finished his course, having kept the faith, 
assured of the crown laid up for him (2 Tim. iv. 8), 
is no mystery, but a revelation. When we do feel 
the mystery is in what with our limited outlook we 
call premature death, the cutting off in the fresh- 
ness of youth of a life of promise, or in the fullness 
of manhood of a life of achievement. It was the 
number of such lives cut off durmg the Great War 
which for the common thought made the problem 
of death so insistent. Apart from the Christian hope 
some light does fall on the darkness. Even were 
continuance of life a natural possibility, it is better 
that there should be a constant succession of fresh 


0 ee a a oe 


_ ee ae ee 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 295 


life in the race than the continuance of the same 
lives; for there must be death in order that for those 
born into the world there may be room and work. 
A man may leave what his life has achieved as an 
inheritance to enrich the lives which will follow his, 
and may not they make more of that inheritance than 
he could have made himself? There are limits to 
individual development under present conditions, and 
so a succession of lives seems to be a condition of 
progress. Even if Christ had not given us the cer- 
tainty, might we not conjecture that another life 
will hold out to those who have passed into the 
unseen further and fuller opportunities than earth 
could have offered them? As regards those who are 
left behind, human. affection need not be destroyed, 
but can be consecrated by bereavement. A solemnity 
and responsibility is given to the present life by the 
consciousness that it must inevitably pass to its 
close. The Epicurean conclusion (Kee. vii. 15, Luke 
xl. 19) is by no means that which the serious-minded 
man will draw from man’s mortality. ‘Work while 
it is day: for the night cometh when no man can 
work’ (John ix. 4) is rather the challenge to conscience 
that the brevity and uncertainty of life offers. For 
even what we call premature death there is a compen- 
sation in the influence which such an experience of 
bereavement may have on those who most feel the 
loss, in inspiring zeal, devotion, consecration of life to 
high ends, so that they may in some measure take 
the place and fulfil the task of him who has been taken 
from them to the world’s loss. A personal confession 
in which Dr. Fairbairn clinches his general argument 
must here be quoted:! ‘ He who writes these things 
once knew a man who was to him companion, friend, 
and more than brother. They lived, they thought, 
they argued together; together they walked on the 
hillside and by the seashore . . . and together they 
had descended into the slums of a great city, where 
no light was nor any fragrance, and had faced the 
worst depravity of our kind. Each kept hope alive 
! The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, pp. 145-6. 


| 


296 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


in the other and stimulated him to high endeavour 


and better purpose; but though the same week saw 
the two friends settled in chosen fields of labour, 
the one settled only to be called home, the other to 
remain and work his tale of toil until his longer day 
be done. But the man who died seemed to leave his 
spirit behind in the breast of the man who survived ; 
and he has lived ever since and lives still, feeling as 
if the soul within him belonged to the man who died. 
And may we not say, this experience is common and 
interprets the experience of the race? Death has 
to be viewed not as a matter of a single person, but 
of collective man; and it works out the good of 
collective man by doing no injustice to the individual, 
but rather using him to fulfil the highest function it 
is granted to mortal man to perform. So let us say 
that however man may conceive death, it belongs to 
those sufferings by which mankind learns obedience, 
and is made perfect.’ 7 
(3) It is true that death may have none of these 
consolations and compensations for a great multitude ; 
but their insensibility to the problem of death is in 
many cases the reason for their indifference to its 
solution, and even where there is no insensibility the 
refusal to accept the solution is not itself a proof of 
its inadequacy, if only tried. When we are dealing, 
however, with such a problem, we are entitled to 
consider, not those who make the least worthy use 
of life, or who refuse what good it offers, but those 
who are making the best use that can be made, and 
are claiming all its good. We are seeking for the 
divine intention, and ‘ the secret of the Lord is with 
them that fear Him’ (Ps. xxv. 14). The shadows of 
evil which fall over the lot and life of man may thus 
be in a measure relieved, not sufficiently to silence 
all doubt, but sufficiently to justify faith. Not in 
a logical demonstration can the goodness of God over 
against the evil of the world be proved, but in a 
personal experience of forgiving love and redeeming 
grace. What can be set over against the pain and 
grief in the world is the fact of Jesus Christ and His 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 297 


Cross, in which through vicarious, sacrificial love God 
draws nearest to man, makes Himself most fully 
known, and gives Himself ungrudgingly to man as 
Father. In that Christian experience the proof of 
God’s Fatherhood is so persuasive and so convincing 
that faith can pass above the shadow to the sunshine 
of His Presence. And the shadow itself is made 
radiant, for suffermg and grief gain a new meaning 
and a fresh worth when we see that God shares with 
men, and saves men by sharing all that seems most 
to challenge His Fatherhood. Pain is taken up into 
the very heart of the ever-blessed God: and so it too 
can be made good. 


II 


The problem of physical evil is, as has just been 
indicated, closely related to that of moral evil, for 
sin often brings pain both on the innocent and on the 
guilty ; and were sin to cease, much of the pain of 
mankind would cease also. The existence of moral 
evil is on first view even a more serious problem for 
Christian faith than the existence of physical evil, 
because it is more directly a contradiction and a 
challenge of the moral perfection of God. But on 
the other hand, to Christian faith there is offered a 
more convincing solution of this problem than of 
that. In the mode of God’s solution of the problem 
of sin, some light falls on the shadows of the problem 
of pain. The doctrine of sin has had so large a place 
in Christian theology, and the change in Christian 
thought in regard to it has been so far-reaching, that 
it will demand a much fuller treatment. 

(1) We may regard moral evil from three points 
of view. As an offence against human society it 1s 
crume ; aS an injury to the nature of the doer it is 
vice; as affecting the relation of man to God it is sin. 
These three aspects can be distinguished but not 
separated: for the individual is so bound up with 
society that he injures himself in wronging of others ; 
and as God is the ultimate cause, the essential reality, 


298 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


and the final purpose of all things, nothing which 
affects a man or his fellows is unrelated to God: an 
injury to self or neighbour is an insult to God. The 
conception of sin, then, is the most comprehensive 
of the three conceptions. 

(1) We can apply to it the two standards already 
mentioned, law and end; it is violation of law and 
frustration of end. As God is the source of moral 
authority, and His purpose for man is his highest 
good, fellowship with and likeness to Himself, sin is 
distrust of God’s love as well as defiance of God’s 
law. Accordingly, a man might be from the Christian 
standpoint even more sinful, whose conduct was more 
correct than another’s, but whose heart was cold 
towards God. The common saying that what a man 
does, and not what he believes, alone matters, is not 
a truism as is often assumed; it is not true at all. 
The fruit of religion is morality, but religion is the 
root of morality in the Christian judgment: a man 
ought to love God as well as do right in order to be- 
come all that God wills that he should be as His son. 
We must think of sin, if we are to think in the dis- 
tinctively Christian way, not in the atmosphere of 
the law-court, but in the spirit of the home, for to 
miss the fellowship of God is no less sin for man than 
to mar the likeness. 

(11) Again, we must apply to sin in the judgment of 
it not the human but the divine standard. Morally 
a man is blameworthy or praiseworthy as his conduct 
does not or does conform to the standard that he 
knows, or could know, not merely the standard that 
he chooses for himself, for in that case a man could 
evade his moral obligations by lowering his moral 
profession. Religiously this is not enough; in re- 
ligion a man is not an end in himself: he must relate 
himself to God, not as a means to God’s end, but as 
finding his own highest good only in God. The guilt 
of a man before God is not measured by his blame- 
worthiness, but by his coming short of the glory of 
God (Rom. iii. 23), God’s manifested purpose for 
him; and this is the measure of his need of redemp- 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 299 


tion. That is the reason why the saint is penitent 
and humble. While others praise his virtues and 
graces, he confesses that he has not yet attained, 
nor is yet made perfect (Phil. ii. 12). While we thus 
distinguish the subjective human and the objective 
divine standard of judgment, and insist that man’s 
sin is not to be measured by his own thoughts of 


himself, but by God’s knowledge of him, we must. 


always remember that God judges men as the Father 
who forgives, saves, and blesses. He reckons our 
euilt not as the measure of the punishment we deserve, 
but as the measure of the grace which we need, the 
redemption which His love is seeking and striving to 
bestow upon us. ‘ Because God is greater than our 
heart, and knoweth all things’ (1 John iv. 20), He is 
not a more severe judge, but a more gracious Saviour.! 

(111) Lastly, we must recognise that sin 1s a conscious, 
voluntary act, even although a man’s own conscience is 
not the final measure of it, and that consequently to 
speak of an inheritance of sin, or a transfer of guilt, or 
a punishment of the innocent is to use language incor- 
rectly, and tends to confusion of thought. Qualities 
may be inherited which are the occasions of sin; one 
man may feel the shame of another’s wrongdoing, but 
he cannot share the guilt unless he is responsible for 
the temptation which led to the sin; the innocent 
suffer physical and social consequences of transgres- 
sion, but for them these consequences are not penal, 
nor can be. These are considerations it is necessary 
to insist on. 
~ (2) As this is not a volume either on bablical theology 
or on history of doctrine, but a constructive essay in 
theology, only those of the many questions which have 
been. raised in the Christian Church can be dealt with 
which are immediately relevant to that purpose. 

(i) While the Old Testament teaches the reality, 
the universality, and the natural inherence of sin, 
apart from the story in Genesis i. of the Fall, it has 
no theory of its origin, and that story is nowhere 


1 In the matter of the standard of judgment to be applied to sin, Tennant’s 
treatment in The Concept of Sin must be regarded as defective. 


a 


300 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


referred to in any other part of the Old Testament. 
It is only in the Apocryphal writings that the explana- 
tion is sought. ‘ Before the Old Testament was com- 
pleted, Jewish thought had arrived at the truth of 
the absolute universality of human sinfulness, and 
had come to regard it as a state which was inherent 
in man and received by him at birth as part of the 
nature he inherits; no cause for such uncleanness or 
corruption, where it is regarded as prior to habit 
established by voluntary acts, is definitely assigned, 
though the writer of Job, at least, seems to have seen 
its source in the necessary and normal infirmity which 
pertains to the finite creature. The identification of 
this inherent tendency to sin with a corruption of 
human nature wrought once and for all by Adam, and 
thence naturally engendered in his posterity, alone is 
wanting of the constituent elements whose union is 
essential to the later doctrine of the Fall. The in- 
creasing sense of individual moral personality, which 
is conspicuous in certain later books of the Old Testa- 
ment, is a tendency which might be supposed to make 
against the acquisition of such a doctrine of solidarity 
in a “first father” of the race, or in the effects of his 
transgression, but indirectly it aided the formation 
of such a view, by adding point to the individual’s 
sense of personal sin, and so fertilising the soil in which 
the doctrine of hereditary acquired corruption has 
its root.’1 Of special interest in this connection is the 
book of Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Ben Sirach, 
as it serves as a connecting link between the Old 
Testament and Jewish teaching in the time of our 
Lord. Although his attitude on the subject is gener- 
ally individualistic, recognising ‘ moral solidarity ’ as 
regards the sufferings of children for their parents’ 
sin, and the influence of example only, and insisting 
on personal liberty and responsibility, he does quite 
explicitly refer to the Genesis story, as recording the 
first sin, and as explaining the origin of death. ‘ From 
a woman was the beginning of sin; and because of 
her we all die’ (xxv. 24). (Cf. xl. 1, ‘ Great travail 
* Tennant’s The Mall and Original Sin, pp. 104-5. 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 301 


is created for every man, and a heavy yoke is upon 
the sons of Adam.’) Without following the details of 
the discussion, Tennant’s conclusion may be quoted: 
‘The author of Ecclesiasticus taught that death was 
a consequence of the sin of the first parents of the 
race: and whilst seeing in this transgression the first 
of a series of human sins, he suspected no causal 
connection between the first and the succeeding 
members of that series.’' Individual sin he traced 
to the evil inclination (yezer). ‘He Himself made 
man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of 
his own counsel’ (xv. 14). The existence of such a 
tendency to sin within man seems to be recognised 
in xxi. 27: ‘When the ungodly curseth Satan, he 
curseth his own soul.’ Probably it is not physical 
but spiritual death of which the writer of the Book of 
Wisdom is thinking, when he states how the divine 
intention was thwarted : 

‘God created man for incorruption, 

And made Him an image of His own proper being ; 

But by envy of the devil death entered into the world, 

And they that are of his portion make trial thereof, 

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, 


And no torment shall touch them.’ 
(ii. 23-111. 1.) 


An element here added is the reference to the agency 
of Satan, ‘the envy of the devil.’ But there is no 
doctrine of an inherited corruption of nature from 
Adam, for Solomon is represented as saying of himself : 


‘Now I was a child of parts, and a good soul fell to my lot, 
Nay rather, being good, I came into a body undefiled.’ 
(vill. 19-20.) 


A corrupted nature is, however, assigned to the Canaan- 
ites as a result of Noah’s curse on their ancestor. 
‘They were a seed accursed from the beginning ’ 
(xi. 11). The Jewish teaching which comes nearest 
to and may have been influenced by the Christian 
teaching is that of 2 Esdras (4 Ezra). ‘° The first 
Adam bearing a wicked heart transgressed, and was 


1 Op. cit., p. 121. 


302 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


overcome; and not he only, but all they also that are 
born of him. Thus disease was made permanent ; 
and thus the law was in the heart of the people along 
with the wickedness of the root ; so the good departed 
away, and that which was wicked abode still’ (iu. 
21-22). It is to be noted, however, that the evil heart 
preceded and did not result from Adam’s transgression ; 
it was the occasion of the Fall, and not the Fall the 
cause of it. Again, to quote Tennant,’ ‘ the disease 
of infirmity which is here stated to have been made 
permanent in the race is not said to have been made 
so by the Fall: the permanent infirmity seems to be 
simply the transmitted evil inclination or the universal 
‘following of Adam’s-example in yielding to it.’ It 
recognised that there has been an increase of this 
tendency in human history. ‘An evil heart hath 
erown up in us, which hath led us astray from these 
statutes, and hath brought us into corruption and into 
the ways of death, hath showed us the paths of 
perdition and removed us far from life; and that 
not a few only, but wellnigh all that have been 
created’ (vii. 48). In one passage spiritual as well 
as physical consequences are assigned to Adam’s 
transgression. ‘It had been better that the earth 
had not given thee Adam; or else, when it had given 
him, to have restrained him from sinning. For what 
profit is it for all that are in this present time to live 
in heaviness, and after death to look for punishment ? 
O thou Adam, what hast thou done? for though it 
was thou that sinned the evil is not fallen on thee 
alone, but upon all of us that come of thee. For what 
profit is it unto us, if there be promised us an im- 
mortal time, whereas we have done the works that 
bring death ?’ (viii. 46-49). While Adam’s sins and 
our sins are thus associated, yet it is not expressly 
asserted that we sin because Adam sinned; the same 
ambiguity is left us by Paul in Romans v. 12. In the 
Apocalypse of Baruch individual liberty and responsi- 
bility are maintained; but in one passage (xlviii. 
42-43) there is agreement with 4 Ezra: ‘O Adam, 
1 Idem, pp. 227-8. 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 303 


what hast thou done to all those who are born of 
thee? And what will be said to the first Eve who 
hearkened to the serpent? For all this multitude 
are going to corruption, nor is there any numbering 
of those whom the fire devours’ (Charles’ rendering). 
Dr. Charles inclines to treat this passage as an inter- 
polation; but if it be accepted as authentic, what must 
be insisted on is that while the book admits ‘ con- 
ditional liability to punishment for imputed sin, it 
argues, on the whole, for undiminished individual 
responsibility ; and in no case does it sanction a 
doctrine of hereditary corruption of human nature, 
though in one particular it approaches such a doctrine.’! 
While there was a preparation in the Jewish teaching 
for Paul’s doctrine, yet the later ecclesiastical dogma 
of inherited corruption as a result of Adam’s trans- 
gression is nowhere taught. 

(ii) Jesus did not in any way concern Himself with 
the origin of sin, but, calling men to repentance, He 
offered forgiveness. He described it as a disease, of 
which He was the physician (Mark 11. 17), asa bondage, 
to deliver from which He was going to give His life 
as a ransom (Matt. xx. 28). Sinners are lost to God, 
and *‘ the Son of man came to seek and to save the 
lost’ (Luke xix. 10). A characteristic feature of His 
teaching is the inwardness of sin, its source in the 
appetites, desires, inclinations. ‘ The things Which 
proceed out of the man are those that defile the man ’ 
(Mark vii. 15). It is Paul who has fully developed the 
doctrine of sin. By an an inductive proof he shows the 
universality of sin, and consequent guilt (Rom. 1.- 
i.), in order that he may assert the necessity of a 
no less universal salvation, since man’s guilt incurs 
the wrath of God. By a personal confession of his 
own experience (Rom. vil. 7-25) he traces the develop- 
ment of sin in the individual. Stn as a power in the 
world objective to man brings him into bondage, and 
has its seat and vehicle in the flesh, which is not | 
identical either with the body or even sensuous 
impulses, but with the whole of man’s nature, asserting 

1 Tennant, op. cit., p. 220. 


304 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


its independence of God, opposing its will to God’s, 
and withstanding the influences of the Spirit of God. 
The law which is intended to restrain sin provokes 
sin rather, and man, approving God’s law, is impotent 
because of the flesh to obey it. He cannot deliver 
himself, and so needs the deliverance God offers in 
Christ. The flesh in Paul has some likeness to the 
yezer of Jewish thought ; but he does not make clear 
whether he regarded it as a natural inclination to 
evil in man, or as a result of Adam’s transgression, 
yet it is possible that he did associate, as did Ezra 
before him, the development of sin in the individual 
with the history of sin in the race. The passage 
(Rom. v. 12-21) in which he refers to the story of the 
| Fall is not part of his argument for the universality 
of sin, nor does he introduce it as an explanation of 
that universality. It is introduced at a later stage 
_ of the discussion in Romans to prove that just as Christ 
is greater than Adam, so is the efficacy of grace 
ereater than the influence of sin. The conclusion of 
the argument is in the words, ‘ Where sin abounded, 
_grace did abound more exceedingly.’ Paul did un- 
_doubtedly teach that death as the penalty of sin came 
on the race as a result of Adam’s disobedience. It 
is certain, however, that he did not teach an imputa- 
tion of the guilt of Adam’s sin to his descendants : 
but he, with a certain inconsequence of thought, 
explains their participation in the penalty of death 
as due to their own transgressions (v. 12), and later 
(v. 18) declares that sin is not imputed where there 
is no law. The clause éd’ @ mavres yuaprov cannot 
be rendered to mean that in Adam all sinned (omnes 
peccarunt, Adamo peccante, Bengel), either because all 
were included physically in Adam (as Levi ‘ was yet 
in the loins of his father,’ Heb. vii. 10), or because 
Adam as the moral representative of the race was 
acting on behalf of it, as the Federal theology after 
taught. He seems to have held by the principle that, 
while the penalty is racial, the guilt is personal. He 
hus combines the older idea which runs through 
most of the Old Testament of the solidarity of the 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 305 


tribe or nation (here extended to the race), and the 
later individualism which is found in Jeremiah and 
Ezekiel. He does not anywhere expressly teach that 
Adam ’s transgression so changed his own nature that 
he transmitted a corrupted nature to his descendants, 
although his doctrine of the flesh does undoubtedly 
suggest this. 

(111) As far as Paul’s teaching is concerned the teach- 
ing of Augustine, Luther, Calvin on original sin and 
total depravity rests on a very uncertain foundation.) 
The teaching of Augustine may be very briefly sum- 
marised. (1) Mankind is a mere massa perditionis, 
and the virtues of the heathen are only splendid sins. 
(2) Adam by his transgression lost his freedom to do 
right, and in him mankind also has become unfree, 
though still morally responsible. (8) There is from 
Adam a transmission both of guilt, so that even babes 
are responsible for Adam’s transgression, and of a 
corrupt nature, so that men are born totally depraved ; 
this inheritance is connected in a most unsavoury 
way with the facts of sexual reproduction, for even 
regenerate parents reproduce in concupiscence with 
the remains of their unregenerate nature. (4) The 
grace, which is the remedy of sin, is sacramental, as 
what is begun in baptism is continued in other sacra- 
ments. (5) Despite his doctrine of predestination, 
Augustine is led by this sacramentalism to affirm the 
possibility of a lapse from a state of grace.t Protes- 
tantism took over this doctrine of man substantially, 
with less sacramentalism, and more emphasis on 
justifying faith. The Federal theology found a justi- 
fication for the connection with Adam asserted by 
teaching that he was representative of the race in 
both accepting and then violating the covenant of 
works. We may assent to Tennant’s conclusion,? 
that ‘the development of the highly complicated 
doctrine of Original Sin was less the outcome of 
strict exegesis than due to the exercise of speculation ; 
speculation working indeed on the lines laid down in 

1 See Mackintosh, Christianity and Sin, pp. 99-105. 
2 The Origin and Propagation of Sin, p. 41. 
U 


ee a 


306 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Scripture, but applied to such material as current 
science and philosophy were able to afford.’ 
| (iv) The previous discussion justifies us in feeling 
entirely free to inquire what science has to teach us 
as to the origin of sin, its development in the individual 
'and its history in the race. It is much to be regretted 
that men speculated about the origin of sin in the 
‘race before they had observed how it begins in the 
‘individual. The study of the child will teach us 
more than the study of the savage, for on the one 
hand within limits the development of the child not 
only physically, as embryology teaches, but even 
mentally and morally, recapitulates the evolution of 
the race, and on the other hand it is an unwarranted 


assumption that the savage represents primitive 


man without any deterioration. (a) We shall there- 


fore begin with the child. The child starts with a 
double burden or boon, physical heredity and social 
inheritance. The promise and potency of its in- 
dividuality are helped or hindered by the past of the — 
race as it comes to it along these two channels. It 
is highly improbable that there is a transmission of 
acquired character, and still less probable that moral 
traits can be so transmitted than that physical 
features should be. ‘ If,’ says Thomson,! ‘ individu- 
ally acquired modifications, the direct results of 
peculiarities in nurture, are not transmissible, then 
modifications have no direct racial importance, and 


it is in this direction that the bulk of the scientific 


evidence points. There are only a few cases that 
suggest the other answer, so that we cannot count 
on this. Without foreclosing the question, we must 
act as if individually acquired modifications were 
not transmissible as such or in any representative 
degree.’ The biologist is concerned with physical 
features; but the moralist may here add, that as 
sin lies in the region of individuality, personal liberty, 
and responsibility, there is still less reason for assum- 
ing any transmission by physical heredity of moral 
character. There are vices, such as impurity and 
1 What is Man ?, p. 140. 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 307 


intemperance, which may have physical consequences | 
which may be transmitted to offspring as racial 
poisons ; but this transmission does not involve the 
transmission also of the moral defects. The drunk- 

ard’s child does not inherit the father’s craving for 
drink directly, but it may be an enfeebled frame, 

which may weaken the power of resistance to the same 
temptation. We may dismiss from consideration the 
possibility of the transmission of moral depravity or 
corruption by physical heredity. What alone can 
be transmitted is physical and consequent mental 
incapacity, which is the occasion in an unfavourable 
environment of moral degradation. There are good 
and bad stocks, but we are not warranted in affirming 
that this difference is due to the transmission of any 
acquired characters, good or bad. What is demon- 
strable as a potent factor in individual develop- 
ment is the social inheritance, which through the 
environment is exercising a constant influence. Moral 
conduct results not only in moral character in the 
individual, but in moral customs, standards, and 
institutions in society. The parents and teachers of 
the child in their moral character and conduct are 
always either making or marring his character. If 
we remember that such influence begins with the 
unborn babe, we shall be readier to recognise that the 
resemblance of children to parents can be more 
reasonably explained by this social inheritance than 
by any physical heredity. The child is born into 
the world, not an actuality, but a possibility of good 
or evil; which possibility shall become actuality , 
depends largely on the influence of the earliest/ 
environment. What is included in this possibility 
as the raw material out of which morality is to be 
formed ? Man as a race has an animal ancestry, 

including instincts, appetites, and impulses, the vital 
purpose of which is self-protection, self-preservation, 

and. self-satisfaction ; and there is nothing morally 
wrong or bad in any of them. Man as a race did not 
start merely on the animal level, for as has been 

shown the final difference of man’s development and 


—— 
— 


308 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


animal evolution does indicate an initial difference. 
We are not justified, then, in assuming that even this 
animal inheritance comes to the child as it does to 
one of the lower animals, or as it sometimes shows 
itself as developed in the savage. It is already 
modified by the distinctively human endowment of 
reason, conscience, and affection, although the animal 
inheritance does show itself in the child’s behaviour 
earlier than the human endowment. With this quali- 
fication, that the human child is not born a mere 
animal, we may accept Dr. Tennant’s conclusion.* 
‘ We have seen that the inborn tendencies of the child 
are natural and non-moral. We may add that they 
are likewise neutral as regards promise of subsequent 
ethical outcome. They are the raw material out of 
which good as well as evil, virtue as well as vice, may 
be hewn and shaped. They are indifferent stuff, 
awaiting moralisation. The fear that is natural to 
all men is the basis alike of cowardice and of the 
highest courage, which is by no means identical with 
fearlessness ; the natural emotion of anger is the source 
of righteous wrath as well as of vindictive passion. 
Our virtues and vices have common roots; and what 
shall grow from those roots depends on the action of 
the will alone.’ This last sentence needs qualification, 
even in the light of what Tennant himself says after- 
wards; for before the will is or can be exercised, a 
right or a wrong direction can be, and is, given to 
the development by the education. As we have 


‘learned from the contribution to our knowledge of 


human personality recently made by psycho-analysis, 
there may be a repression of impulses which is a 
hindrance, or a sublimation which is a help in the 
formation of moral character. As conscience is not 
awakened till about the age of three, and usually by 


_ obedience to commands enforced by punishment, and 


is not reinforced by affection till somewhat later; as 


' much later comes any independent reflection, or 


formation of an individual moral standard,—these 
instincts, appetites, and impulses get a start before 
1 The Child and Religion, p. 171. 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 309 


the moral restraints or constraints can affect the will. 
‘The moral life,’ says Tennant, ‘is a race in which 
every child starts handicapped. The pleasures of 
forms of conduct which are destined to be forbidde 
him have been tasted and known; pleasure-givin 
actions have already become forged into chains o 
habit ; the expulsive power of the new affection which 
is to establish another rule cannot at first be One 
felt. When will and conscience enter, it is into a land’ 
already occupied by a powerful foe. And, in the 
opening stages of the moral life, higher motives cannot, 
from the very circumstances of the case, appeal so 
strongly as the lower and more accustomed already in 
possession. Into the “‘ seething and tumultuous life 
of natural tendency, of appetite and passion, affection 
and desire ”’ is introduced the new-born moral purpose, 
which must struggle to win the ascendancy.’ This 
is probably a correct account of the moral develop- 
ment of the majority of children; it needs to be 
qualified where the environment is decisively good or 
bad. Christian nurture, through which the grace of 
Christ reaches the young life, may greatly strengthen 
both moral restraints and constraints, and make the 
development predominantly good. On the contrary, 
in an evil environment the development may be almost 
hopelessly bad, although, as has already been shown, 
unexhausted moral reserves may afterwards be dis- 
closed. 

(b) The moral development of the child is affected 
by the social inheritance, where what Ritschl? has called 
the Kingdom of Sin has been formed. ‘ The subject 
of sin is hwmanity as the sum of all individuals, in so 
far as the selfish action of each person, involving him 
as it does in illimitable interactions with all others, 
is directed in any degree whatsoever towards the 
opposite of the good, and leads to the association of 
individuals in common evil.’ We may then speak 
of mankind as a sinful race; and we must investigate 
the moral history of the race. It is, as has already 
been indicated in several connections, an unwarranted 

' Op. cit., p. 178, 2 Justification and Reconcifiation, p. 335. 


310 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


assumption that mankind began in the condition of 
barbarism or savagery, and that its evolution has 
been a continuous upward movement. Progress there 
has on the whole been, but there has also been de- 
terioration. ‘ We fancy,’ says Thomson,! ‘ that the 
happy moments of primitive man were many, for we 
entirely disagree with reflecting modern slum condi- 
tions or depressed savage conditions on primitive man. 
ie enjoyed himself when he had a comfortable cave 
with pleasant neighbours. He liked a sunbath, as 
his very distant relations, the monkeys, do. A swim, 
too, for he was punctiliously cleanly. He kept in 
good heart and in good fettle, else he would never 
have succeeded, even with all his wits, in the battle 
{Tomo versus Mundum—won. not by us, but by primi- 
tive man.’ Thomson disagrees from James’ extreme 
view of the rough animality of primitive man. We 
may at once set aside the extravagances of theologians 
who represented Adam as a paragon of human per- 
fection, and Paradise as the home of a culture and a 
virtue which humanity has since failed to attain; or 
the attempt recently made by Dr. Hall 2 to reconcile 
scientific theory with Catholic dogma by assuming 
that ‘ as man’s primitive state was partly supernatural, 
an original righteousness was made possible by grace,’ 
and that only after the Fall was man left to that 
natural development which science describes for us. 
We may, however, turn to a modern man of science 
who is also a Christian believer to discover what can 
be said about the Fall to reconcile faith and reason. 
Dr. James Y. Simpson agrees with Dr. J. Arthur 
Thomson in refusing to recognise the savage as the 
representative of primitive man, to whom he assigns 
a capacity for progress which the savage lacks, unless 
an external stimulus is applied. He also seeks in the 
individual moral development a clue as to what the 
racial history may have been. This is what he 
tentatively offers to us.? ‘ Any external descriptive 
account can, however, in no way even summarise the 


1 What is Man ?, p. 52. ° Evolution and the Fall, pp. 128-48. 
* The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature, p: 287. 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 311 


inward process in virtue of which advance took place. 
Even could we be sure of the particular initial moment 
in which an individual became first aware of alter- 
natives of conduct as higher and lower, and volun- 
tarily chose the lower, it would be difficult to affirm 
that sin definitely entered at that moment. The 
action was certainly sinful, but the entrance and 
victory of sin has never been a momentary affair; it 
is an age-long process, alike in its origin, its persistence, 
its elimination. Yet is there nothing necessary or 
inevitable about it. We may discuss the origin and 
implications of sin, never its origin and function. It 
was no necessary stage in the development of man. 
The struggle is inevitable, not the fall. He might | 
have overcome in the beginning; he might have 
followed the gleam. The instinctive impulse and 
appetite, strong in some cases because of their basal 
utility to life, the conscious desire when faced with 
the dawning recognition of a higher if more difficult 
way, present the arena for struggle and resistance. 
As when the electric current is turned on, and the 
are lights flicker and burn unsteadily till the power 
avails to transfuse the recalcitrant material, so the 
darkness of man’s early life was only gradually and 
fitfully illumined ; that there was a return to darkness 
at all after the initial flash is the statement of ‘“‘ the 
Fall.”?’ The evolution of the race has not been, 
just as the development of the individual is not what 
it ought to have been; and we can therefore speak of 
a racial as well as an individual sin. The raw material 
of the animal ancestry and the distinctively human 
endowment, the influence of the environment and 
the social inheritance, combine in helping or hindering y 
the free will in its obedience to conscience. Moral 
liberty and responsibility are not only preserved on 
this view, while limitations are recognised, but more 
securely preserved than on the older view of the in- 
heritance of a nature so corrupt as a result of Adam’s 
fall that man is free only to do evil, and incapable of 
good. His need of redemption from actual sin in the 
race and himself is no less asserted. 


$12 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(3) Small as may have appeared the beginnings of | 

sin, in view of what it has grown to in human history, — 
‘a kingdom of sin,’ claiming as its subjects all born 

into this world, using as its agency social customs, 
standards and institutions, opposing itself to, hinder- 
ing, delaying, and even sometimes appearing to prevail 
over the Kingdom of God, the question must be asked, 
Why did God permit the entrance of sin into the 
world, why does He tolerate its continuance ? While 
the problem of moral evil is more acute, its solution 
by the divine grace also is more adequate. It has 
already been shown to how great an extent pain is 
related to sin. Were men wiser, better, and more 
loving the amount of suffering would be so greatly 
reduced that what remained could more easily be 
understood as consistent with God’s goodness as a 
necessary condition of man’s personal development. 
The answer to the question raised is twofold: God 
permitted the possibility of sin in the making of man, 
because not otherwise could His purpose concerning 
man be fulfilled. While the actuality of sin was not 
necessary for the fulfilment of God’s purpose He 
tolerated that actuality, and tolerates it, because 
by His method of grace He is dealing with sin 
more effectively in accordance with His purpose for 
man than He could in any other way which can be 
imagined or conceived. 

(i) If man is to develop into moral and religious 
personality, doing the right and loving God, he must 
be free to choose the wrong instead of the right or 
to be as God unto himself. Without freedom no 
morality and no religion are conceivable, because no 
personality. God willed to have as the consummation 
of the process of creation a family of sons, freely 
choosing fellowship with and likeness to Himself. 
God as Father could communicate, and reproduce 
His own perfection, only in free human personalities. 
No possibility of holy love without freedom, and no 
freedom without the possibility of sin; to prevent 
sin would be to destroy freedom. God’s omnipotence 
does not mean that God could have created man 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 313 


free, and yet have excluded the possibility of the ~ 
wrong choice being made. The theology which repre- 
sents God as absolute will, free and able to do anything 
that can be conceived, cannot use such an argument 
legitimately; for such a view of God, sin must ever 
remain an inscrutable mystery. But, if we recognise 
that God’s own character and purpose, and the nature 
of the reality He creates, involve lmitations on the 
exercise of His omnipotence, then we are entitled to 
offer this solution of the problem of why God per- 
mitted the possibility of sin. 

(ii) As in a previous section it has been argued that 
God foresees free acts not as actual, but as possible, 
we need not meet the further objection, that God 
not only in creating knew the possibility of sin, but 
foreknew the actuality; all we need affirm is that 
He knew sin as a possibility inherent in freedom. 
Did God then in creating take an incalculable risk, 
was creation a reckless speculation? ‘There are the 
responsibilities of the Creator not to create a world 
that should finally disappoint His hopes, and defeat 
His aims. The fact that God has created the world 
should for Christian faith, which believes in God as 
Father, be a proof, a convincing proof, that God knew 
Himself to possess all the resources, rational, moral, 
and spiritual, to deal with any emergency. We may 
say with all reverence that it would have been wrong 
for God to create a world with the possibility of sin 
entering in, unless He had abundant grace to redeem 
that world from sin. We are not entitled to assert 
a dogmatic universalism, on the ground that the 
salvation of every soul is essential to the completeness 
of that redemption, which will satisfy the heart of 
the Father, and fulfil the purpose He had in creating 
man. We are entitled, however, to hope that the 
redemption will be very much more nearly if not 
altogether universal than a survey of the moral and“ 
religious condition of mankind as it now is might lead 
us to expect. There are wonders and surprises of 
the divine grace for which faith in God should prepare 
us. The solution of the problem, then, les partly in 


‘ Vy 


314 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


the future. We shall know why God allowed sin to 
enter when we know how He has cast it out from 
mankind. 

(i) Even if, withdrawing our gaze from the begin- 
ning of sin in the past, and the ending of sin in the 
future, we fix our eyes on the present, and what God 
is now doing in the world, we shall gain the confidence 
that the problem is being solved in fact, and thus also 
for thought. God is tolerating the continuance of 
sin in the race because He is in His own method of 
erace working out its redemption. Those who de- 
mand divine interferences in the course of human 
history, to put an end to sin and its consequences, 
those who expect a fimal divine interference in a 
supernatural manifestation of Christ at His Second 
Advent, do not, be it said with all respect for many 
good men, understand God’s ways. If God were 
forced to use omnipotence to put an end to the sin 
and consequent misery of the world, He would have 
suffered moral and spiritual defeat at the hands of 

sin, for He would have shown Himself incapable of 
winning the victory by moral and spiritual means, 
‘the only means congruous with the nature of the 
conflict and the character and the purpose of God. 
It is disbelief in the sufficient and sovereign efficacy 
of grace to desire and to expect any other method of 
dealing with the sin of the world. Such an expecta- 
tion, however dishonouring to God on close scrutiny 
it proves to be, might have some excuse, if history 
afforded proof that the method of grace has failed 
‘and is failing. But is there any justification for the 
belief that Christ is not seeing of the travail of His 
soul, and is not being satisfied with a race that is 
being by His Cross and Holy Passion as well as His 
sovereignty of grace redeemed from sin unto God ? 
To assert this is to indulge in a pessimism which the 
evidence does not warrant, Sin abounds, but does 
not grace abound more exceedingly, or at least is there 
not promise of its so abounding ? The possibility of 
the right choice for the race has not been excluded by 
the wrong. Mankind is not merely a massa perditionis. 


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 315 


That there has been human_progress, if not in in- 
dividual capacity and character, yet in the inheritance 
of good which one generation passes on to another, 
not constant nor certain, but real, is evidence that the 
possibility of good is becoming more fully actuality 
than the possibility of evil. In that progress human 
endeavour is not the only factor; it is the witness of 
religion that God is working with and for man. The 
confidence of faith is not in what man can and will 
achieve, but in what God is in His grace doing in and 
by man. In Jesus Christ and His Cross and Reign 
God’s counter-working of evil for good reaches its 
completion. Man as redeemed from sin in Christ 
Jesus has a value for God such as a puppet, however 
endowed in other respects, could never have had. 
We dare not with Augustine speak of the beata culpa, 
the sin which has made grace so to abound, although 
we cannot imagine that the world without the Cross 
would have had as great value for God as the world 
saved by His sacrifice. When God’s purpose is ful- 
filled in the redeemed race, then, and only then, will 
be fully disclosed God’s reason for allowmg sin to 
enter the world, and bearing so patiently with it when 
it had entered. In no other way, consistent with holy 
love, it would seem, could mankind become a free 
and redeemed family of God. 


CHAPTER IV 
REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 


I 


In a previous chapter religion as the highest function 
of human personality was dealt with; and it was 
then indicated that religion involves revelation, since 
it is a mutual relation between God and man, and the 
core of it is in the immediate contact and intimate 
communion of man with God. In this mutual rela- 
tion we cannot conceive man as alone active in his 
search after God, and God passive, waiting to be 
found. The parables of the lost sheep and the lost 
coin illustrate the truth about this relation better than 
the parable of the prodigal son (Luke xv.). 

(1) Mysticism is justified in claiming that there is 
an immediate contact of God with man, that ‘in Him 
we live, and move, and have our being’ (Acts xvii. 28), 
although those forms of mysticism are mistaken which 
think that the immediate contact can best be realised 
in a condition of ecstasy, when, consciousness lost, the 
soul swoons into oneness with God,—a God empty 
of definite content,—or which seeks the exclusive 
privilege of individual visions or voices to convey the 
assurance of God’s present reality. When the soul is 
alive to God, it will ask the question of the Psalmist, 

‘Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit ? 
Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence ?’ 
(CXxXXixgge) 
In that presence it will find a refuge in time of trouble. 


‘In the covert of Thy presence shalt Thou hide them that fear 
Thee from the plottings of man.’ (xxx. 20.) 


In that presence it will find its source of gladness. 


‘In Thy presence is fulness of joy ; 
In Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.’ 
(xvi. 11.) 
316 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 317 


And therefore the greatest evil it can conceive is the 
loss of that presence. 


‘Cast me not away from Thy presence ; 
And take not Thy holy Spirit from me.’ 
ia ay 


It will be observed that in two of these passages the 
Spirit is mentioned as the equivalent of the presence. 
The activity of God in man is so conceived in the 
Old Testament ; it is in the New Testament, however, 
that the truth that God Himself is present in man 
by His Spirit finds its clearest and fullest expression, 
because it was through faith in Christ that believers 
most certainly and adequately experienced the pres- 
ence and power of the Spirit of God. The discussion 
of the doctrine of the Spirit must, therefore, be 
reserved for the last section of the present volume. 
(2) The presence of God is real; the contact is 
immediate; but man’s consciousness of God is 
mediated through his personal activities in contact 
and commerce with the world which is his home. 
Why is this? It is in order that man may preserve 
his individuality, exercise his liberty, realise his 
responsibility, achieve his personality, that God, as 
it were, stands afar off, and hides Himself, so that 
man to find Him must seek Him. God’s communi- 
cativeness is conditioned by man’s receptivity and 
responsiveness, and his capacity for God is developed 
in his intercourse with God. God’s revelation is 
measured by man’s religion; and hence His revela- 
tion must be progressive, corresponding to man’s 
religious development. The psychology of religion 
is the study not only of human processes, but also 
of divine methods. Just as the most learned scholar 
must begin with the ABC, so has mankind learned 
of God * precept upon precept, precept upon precept ; 
line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a 
little’ (Is. xxvii. 13). God hath spoken ‘ by divers 
portions and in divers manners’ (Heb. 1. 1). Nor 
need we assume that this gradualness of God’s 
revelation is the result of sin, that it is man’s false- 


318 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


hood and error which alone hinder God’s full revela- 
tion of Himself at once. Evolution is God’s method 
of creation of the world and man, and it is no less the 
method of His revelation, for a communication beyond 
the capacity of man to receive and respond would be 
idle and vain. We may say that human development 
is by divine education. Hosea, the tenderest of all 
the prophets, describes God’s chosen people at the 
beginning of its history as a child. * When Israel 
was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out 
of Egypt’ (xi. 1). And as we read the Old Testament 
we discover that God taught Israel as a child. God 
has not been like the pedant who can talk to an infant 
only in polysyllables; He is like the mother who has 
her baby-talk. The beginnings of religion are so 
crude, appearing to us now so superstitious, that 
it is not easy for us to accustom ourselves to the 
thought that these were the glimpses of the dawn of 
the day of divine revelation, of which the Son of God 
as man was the noontide splendour. Yet even in 
what Christian scholars have called the ethnic re- 
ligions, the religions of the Gentiles as distinguished 
from the religion of the Hebrews and the Jews, of 
which Christianity is the completion, we can trace a 
progress from the primitive philosophy of animism 
through the religion of polydaemonism and polytheism 
to varied forms, which approach, although they do 
not attain, the ‘ethical monotheism’ of the prophets. 
Irom the belief in and worship of a countless host of 
unnamed spirits (polydaemonism) man advanced to 
the recognition and adoration of a more measurable 
multitude of gods, named because more distinctly 
conceived, and more intimately related to men 
(polytheism) ; and even in monolatry he confined his 
regular worship to one god, while acknowledging 
the existence of many, or in kathenothetsm he in the 
act of worship was absorbed in contemplation and 
adoration of only the one god at the moment ad- 
dressed, or in monarchy he exalted one god in the 
pantheon as ruler of gods and men, or in pantheism 
he thought of God as the one reality, and all distine- 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 319 


tion from that God as illusive.t| Only among the 
Hebrews was monotheism reached; but in other 
religions we may observe this movement toward a 
recognition and confession of the divine unity. While 
there was deterioration in doctrine and practice in 
paganism, such as Paul condemns in Romans 1. and ii., 
it was not so deliberately false and wicked as it must 
have appeared to a Jew like Paul, to whom this 
‘ethical monotheism’ was an inheritance; and there 
was progress also, as any appreciative study of the 
history of religions will prove. Such a _ general 
revelation of God to mankind is recognised by Paul 
in his speeches at Lystra and Athens (Acts xiv. 15, 17, 
XVli. 22-31), and in his argument regarding the 
universality of sinfulness (Rom. 1. 18-23, i. 14-16). 
We must recognise this general revelation of God as 
the background of that special revelation of which 
our Bible is the record; but before we can deal with 
this there are some considerations to be offered re- 
garding the universal media of revelation. 

(3) While God approaches man in many ways, we 
may specially mention three media of revelation, 
nature, history, conscience. 

(i) The psalms, which are so full of the realisation 
of the presence of God, often express the manifestation 
of God in nature : | 
is ‘The heavens declare the glory of God ; 

And the firmament sheweth His handywork. 

Day unto day uttereth speech, 

And night unto night sheweth knowledge. 

There is no speech nor language ; 

Their voice cannot be heard. 

Their line is gone out through all the earth, 

And their words to the end of the world.’ 

(xix. 1-4.) 

The voice of God in nature uses no language that can 
be heard by the hearing of the ears (v. 3), but it is 
understood by the mind of man. ‘There follows in this 
same psalm a passage which may be described as 
mythology, converted to monotheism (vv. 5-6). 


1 See Jevons’ Introduction to the History of Religion; and Moore’s The 
History of Religions. 


F 


320 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Iilsewhere the processes of nature are described as 
the immediate activities of God. So in paganism all 
natural operations are conceived and described as 
the actions of gods. Sol drives his fiery chariot across 
the heavens; Aeolus releases his winds from the 
cavern in which he holds them captive; Neptune 
rules the waves. Illustrations need not be multiplied. 
Paul, as has already been shown, recognises this 
manifestation of God’s power, wisdom, and goodness 
in nature. Jesus (Matt. vi. 26-28) saw the care and 
the bounty of the Heavenly Father in the food of the 
birds of the air and the clothing of the flowers of the 
field. It is measureless power, unfathomable wisdom, 
abounding goodness which nature discloses. But it 
surely discloses the glory of God in its beauty and its 
sublimity, where beauty breaks the bounds of finite 
comprehension and soars to infinite suggestiveness. It 
is through the beauty of nature that poets and artists 
have often found God. The prophet of this divine 
revelation in nature is pre-eminently Wordsworth: 

‘I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things.’ 

(Tintern Abbey.) 


While morality is the function of man most closely 
related to religion, because goodness reveals more of 
the nature of God than beauty, yet art as the en- 
deavour to capture the spirit of beauty has been too 
much ignored as also an interpretation of the perfec- 
tion of God. What the poet feels as a presence, the 
philosopher tries to reach as the conclusion of an 
argument. Recognising fully that the existence, 
nature, character, and purpose of God cannot be 
proved by rigidly logical reasoning, as the conclusion 
must needs contain as much more than the premises 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 321 


as God transcends all that He has made, yet the 
‘ theistic proofs’ have this measure of validity, that 
they show that the world appears more intelligible, 
rational, purposive, significant, valuable in a theistic 
than in any other setting.1 Reason so far justifies 
religious faith and aesthetic vision. 

~~(ii) As in history the activity of man plays a much 
larger part than in the operations of nature, which 
man can direct and control only in a very limited 
degree, the revelation of God is more often and to a 
greater extent obscured by the folly and wickedness 
of man. It would be an altogether distorted repre- 
sentation of history which would ignore the agency 
of man, and ascribe all events directly to the inter- 
vention of God ; but it would be no less an inadequate 
interpretation of history which would ascribe all the 
merit to man, as did Comte in his Positive Polity, 
his religion of humanity, and ignore the providence 
of God. It is not piety to ascribe to God’s will, and 
to acquiesce in and submit to the consequences of 
man’s sin. A view of Providence which ignores 
historical causality tends to superstition, and away 
from religion. While this may be fully not only con- 
ceded, but even in the interests of a reasonable religion 
insisted on, yet a consideration of the history of man- 
kind does justify the belief in Providence, a divine 
guidance and guardianship of the race in its onward 
march. The divine purpose has been hindered and 
hampered by human ignorance, indifference, indolence, 
or even hostility and defiance, but nevertheless 


‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, 


Rough-hew them how we will.’ 
(Zamlet.) 


We cannot from human history exclude contingency 
and find in it all, as Hegel ? strives to do, the necessary 
evolution of Idea or Spirit ; but there is a philosophy 
of history which can find a wider meaning in it than 
the actors themselves conceived. We may agree with 


1 See Balfour’s Theism and Humanism. 
2 The Philosophy of History, Eng. trans., by Sibree. 
x 


322 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Matthew Arnold! that there is ‘the Eternal, not 
ourselves, which makes for righteousness.’ The rise 
and the fall of empires do illustrate or demonstrate 
a moral order in the world. In the long run and on 
the big scale, though not immediately in individual 
experience, righteousness prospers, and wickedness 
perishes. Human agency is not set aside; but God 
is so immanent in man, that the consequences of 
human conduct negate sin and affirm goodness, and 
that men are restrained from evil and constrained to 
good as God’s fellow-workers. It is in the history of 
the Hebrew nation itself, and from the standpoint of 
its records, that this interpretation of human history 
as divine providence is most convincing; but every 
nation, if it had a succession of inspired prophets, 
might in its own experiences trace such divine dealing 
in mercy or in judgment, and might thus discover a 
revelation of God in history. 

(ii) The Hebrew language has no word for con- 
science, as Old Testament psychology had not yet 
reached an adequate analysis of human personality. 
That does not mean, however, that there was no 
recognition of the voice within. From Greek ethical 
thought the New Testament with its more developed 
psychology borrowed the word, although the word is 
not always used when that function of human per- 
sonality is referred to. In both parts of our Bible 
the word heart is more frequently used. Morality 
among the Hebrews was so dependent on and 
dominated by religion, that man’s capacity for moral 
judgment was not investigated.2 It was Socrates 
who first started on this ethical inquiry. By discus- 
sion he believed men could discover the general 
principles which should regulate individual conduct ; 
from just acts might be inferred what justice is, and 
then the standard might be applied to determine 
in case of doubt whether acts were just or unjust. 
Practice, be it observed, afforded the data for theory. 
Yet Socrates did not rely on reasoning only; there 


1 Literature and Dogma; and God and the Bible. 
* See Wheeler Robinson’s The Christian Doctrine of Man, chaps. i. and ii. 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 323 


survived some of the religion which he had inherited 
in his belief in his davmon, or guardian spirit, who 
restrained him from actions which he ought not to 
take.t It may be that the content of any individual 
conscience may be proved to be a reproduction of 
social customs which have been invested with the 
authority of social standards, and are enforced by 
social sanctions of reward or ‘punishment, And the 
conscience of most men is little, if anything, more 
than what public opinion or popular sentiment con- 
demns or approves. But this is far from being all 
that can or need be said about conscience. Conscience 
is a capacity to receive a content of moral judgments, 
and to recognise their authority and assert their 
demands; and these judgments may generally be 
received from the society to which a man belongs ; 
but it is also a capacity to receive a content from God, 
to be the channel of God’s revelation of His character 
and purpose. All moral progress depends on the 
measure in which an individual conscience can become 
independent of social standards, so as to rise above 
them, and in course of time to raise them. Kant 
asserted the autonomy of the categorical imperative 
in each man, and yet he admitted that religion is the 
recognition of our human duties as divine commands.? 
We need not accept his antithesis, but may say that 
a man realises himself morally as he receives and 
responds to this revelation of God’s character and 
purpose. There have been reformers who were guided 
by the moral conscience, uninfluenced by the religious 
consciousness — men who did not think of what 
seemed right to them as God’s will, and thus as in- 
vested with a higher than human authority; the 
greater number, however, of those who have led the 
race morally have been inspired for the arduous and 
often even perilous task by the religious conscious- 
ness: ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ When the moral 
conscience thus functions it becomes a channel of 


1 See Socrates, by J. T. Forbes, chaps. v. and vill. 
2 Compare his Critique of the Practical Reason and his Religion within the 
Bounds of Reason alone. 


324 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


divine revelation explicitly ; it is this implicitly even 
when, as in Socrates, the reason of man is exercised to 
determine what is right and good. We recognise 
then gratefully that God has not left Himself without 
witness in any land or age; but that in nature, history, 
and conscience He has revealed Himself as well as in 
what has been already described as the core of all 
religion, the consciousness of immediate contact and 
intimate communion with God. 

(4) We do not deny the reality nor depreciate the 
value, although we admit the insufficiency of this 
wider revelation, when we recognise that in the 
revelation through the Hebrew nation and the Jewish 
people by a succession of prophets God has more 
distinctly and certainly manifested His nature, char- 
acter, and purpose. While our judgment of paganism 
may not be as severe as was Paul’s in view of the 
aspects which came under his notice, yet we may 
recognise that human sin has perverted the develop- 
ment even of religion in man, that the light of God 
shone in a darkness which comprehended it not. 
Without regarding all pagan piety and morals as 
altogether due to artful wickedness, we must admit 
both degradation and inadequacy. What the pro- 
eress of the divine revelation might have been in a 
sinless race, we cannot now conjecture. For man as 
he is, the wider revelation has not been sufficient. 

(i) It was needful that there should be a revelation, 
from its beginning in the widest sense redemptive 
and reconciling, recovering men from error, wicked- 
ness, and hate, to truth, holiness, and love in com- 
munion with God. That it should be given through 
one people is quite in accord with God’s method as 
we can observe it elsewhere. The human good has 
not been achieved universally, equally in all human 
beings. Within each society individual men have 
been selected for the furtherance of the common good, 
and so also societies in the human community. 
Limitation of interest and concentration of effort are 
the conditions of highest achievement in all spheres. 
The jack-of-all-trades is master of none. He would 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 325 


be all things in general without being anything in 
particular. This principle applies no less to nations. 
The common illustration of this principle, because the 
most convincing, is the contribution of the Ancient 
to the Modern world in the Hebrew religion, the Greek 
culture, and the Roman law. When the world has 
been Christianised, doubtless India, China, and Japan 
will have a distinctive contribution to make to the 
application and interpretation of Christianity. No 
theist would deny that God was revealing Himself, 
some part of His nature, character, and purpose, in 
Greek culture and Roman law; but because the 
Hebrew contribution was religion, the conscious and 
voluntary relation of man to God, that revelation is 
explicit as in the other spheres it was rather implicit. 
Neither Greek sage nor Roman jurist said as did the 
prophet: ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ There was not the 
certainty of communion with and communication 
from God. It is the same God of infinite fullness and 
absolute perfection who is revealing Himself, but He 
does not reveal the same content by the same method. 

(11) If it be said that the difference is only subjective, 
and not objective, that there is only an increase of 
human receptivity and responsiveness, and not of 
divine communicativeness, it may be urged that the 
analogy of the human intercourse contradicts that 
assumption. A man lays bare his heart in his home 
as he does not in the world; he gives himself more 
freely to his friends than to strangers: his most 
sacred confidences are reserved for only a few, it may 
be only one, and poor is his life if he has not even one 
to whom he can thus turn. As Browning says, a man 
has a soul-side with which to face the world, and 
another to show a woman when he loves her. God’s 
Fatherhood is universal, but His love is individually 
discriminating; with sinners He is grieved, His 
delight is in the excellent of the earth. God does 
surely impart His secret to them that fear Him; it 
is not merely that they are quicker than others to 
detect it. If we may use a physical analogy, it was 
the action of light on a more sensitive part of the 


326 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


organism which gradually developed the eye. It is 
by the imparting of His light to select souls that their 
sight is developed as in no others. God is not passive, 
but active; it is His communication which develops 
man’s receptivity and responsiveness. To say that 
the Hebrews had a genius for religion, or a tendency 
to monotheism, is to try to solve a problem by a phrase, 
and a phrase which does not correspond to fact. 
The Semitic kinsmen of Israel were not monotheistic, 
and the Israelites themselves were constantly lapsing 
into polytheism and idolatry. They were ‘a dis- 
obedient and gainsaying people,’ and God had to 
‘ hew them by the prophets.’ If we follow the history 
of prophecy from the eighth to the fifth century, we 
cannot regard the development of ‘ ethical mono- 
theism’ as simply a natural process; we must 
recognise an activity of God by His Spirit, and an 
activity which is different in its method from the 
universal activity of God in religion generally. As 
in a man’s life there are habits in the common ways 
of intercourse with. and influence on his fellows, and 
original acts in which he meets a new situation, or 
discloses himself more fully than he has ever done, 
so may we see that God in this nation by His prophets 
did act as nowhere else in human history to disclose 
His mind, unbare His heart, and assert His will. , 
(ili) The distinctive features of that activity are in 
God’s providential dealing with that people, and in 
His inspiration of the succession of prophets. God’s 
providence is over all nations, and each nation might 
write its own Bible. The defeat of the Spanish 
Armada in 1588 is, for instance, a parallel to the relief 
of the siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.c. But when we 
have allowed all this, the difference between the 
history of the Hebrew nation and that of any other 
nation is not simply that in the one case the human 
experiences were interpreted by the prophets as divine 
providences, and not in the other. We do not ignore 
or deny historical sequence or human agency ; we do 
not assert continuous or frequent miracle; and 
nevertheless, as we watch this small nation, and the 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 327 


contact of greater nations or mighty empires with it, 
and the influence of that contact on its moral and 
religious development, we cannot escape the impres- 
sion of the Guiding and Guarding Hand of God. It 
was not an exaggerated patriotism or piety which led 
the prophets to interpret that history as the fulfilment 
of a divine purpose; theirs was no subjective illusion, 
but an objective illumination. ‘ Surely the Lord God 
will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto 
His servants the prophets’ (Amos i. 7). It is not on 
the records of miracles that this conclusion rests, but 
on the impression of the whole course of events. 
The records of miraculous occurrences are for the 
most part of so much later date than the events, that 
we are warranted in scrutinising them closely, and 
coming to the conclusion that the narrative can 
usually be explained by a misconception of a natural 
occurrence, ¢.g. the parting of the waters of the Red 
Sea, the provision of manna (Ex. xiv., xvl., etc.), or 
by a misinterpretation of a poetic phrase (as, for 
instance, the standing still of the sun, Joshua x. 12). 
The stories of Elijah and Elisha, it is clear, rest on 
popular tradition and are not as trustworthy as the 
historical narrative into which they have been fitted. 
It is not because of miracles, even should our studies 
lead us to admit their actuality—a question on which, 
in many cases, there must be suspension of judgment— 
but because the history itself is so significant morally 
and religiously that we include it as a medium of 
divine revelation. The record is undoubtedly prag- 
matic; sin and its punishment, repentance and its 
reward, do not so rapidly and invariably follow one 
another as the pious writers assume; but in the 
history as a whole a moral and religious purpose of 
God, which the events subserve, does disclose itself. 
The prophecy which interprets events as divine mercy 
or judgment, in so far as it is predictive, 1s conditional. 
God threatens a judgment which penitence may avert, 
or promises a mercy which unbelief may refuse. As 
has been already argued in another connection, we 
must not assume either foreknowledge or fore- 


328 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


ordination by God of man’s free acts. While God’s 
intention is constant, His method is variable, adapted 
at each stage to man’s response, whether of defiance 
or of submission. When we view the whole progress 
from Abraham and Moses to the prophets, and then 
its consummation in Jesus Christ, the Revealer of 
God and the Redeemer of men, we cannot doubt 
nor deny that this is ‘the Lord’s doing; it is 
marvellous in our eyes’ (Ps. exviii. 22). To think of 
all this movement of human history to such a goal as 
accidental is unreasonable. To ascribe it all to 
natural causality and human agency does not satisfy 
the reason. ‘The moral conscience and the religious 
consciousness demand the recognition of the direction 
and control of the movement by God Himself. Such 
a view of revelation is much more impressive and 
convincing than the view that God dictated the record 
of it, defective as historical inquiry proves that record. 
in many particulars to be; for God here teaches man 
in facts, and not in words, to lead, to succour, and t 
bless. | 
What makes the preparatory revelation in history 
so congruous with its consummation in the fact of 
Christ is that it is redemptive. Paul for the purpose 
of his argument and in relation to his opponents was 
entirely justified in contrasting Law and Gospel; but 
we should do grievous injustice to the previous history 
if we interpreted it as revealing God as Lawgiver 
primarily, and not as Saviour. The Exodus from 
Kgypt and the Return from the Exile in Babylon are 
instances of national salvation wrought by God, and 
in between these are recorded many deliverances. 
And what is still more significant than the outward 
salvation of events is the inward salvation of ex- 
perience. The ‘ ethical monotheism ’ of the prophets 
is a redemption of the mind and soul of man from 
error and sin. Forgiveness is not an unfamiliar word 
in the Old Testament. The relation of God becomes 
more individual than national, as the revelation 
progresses, and the Psalms contain confessions which 
Christian faith can still use of individual experiences 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 329 


of the Saving God. It is a redemptive revelation in 
national history and individual experience that runs 
as a golden thread throughout the Old Testament 
records. 

(iv) As we read the prophetic interpretation of the 
history as divine providence, we must ask ourselves : 
how could these men speak with such certainty and 
authority ? They claimed to be the messengers of 
God, because God Himself had given them their 
message. Was theirs a ‘vaulting ambition which 
o’erleaps itself,’ or did they speak the words of truth 
and soberness? The moral and religious quality of 
their teaching, so great a contrast to the religious and 
moral traditions and customs of their surroundings, 
assures us that they were not mistaken as to its source ; 
it was not of man, and the will of man alone, but of 
God. They were inspired men, men conscious of 
God’s presence with them, God’s Spirit bringing en- 
hightenment to their minds, enthusiasm to their 
hearts, energy to their wills, consecration to the one 
end of their lives. They were saved and consecrated 
men, and so their whole personality was not sup- 
pressed, but expanded and liberated as the channel 
of God’s truth and grace. To say that God dictated 
their words would be to lower and not to heighten 
their claim. It was they who spake or wrote, each 
in his individual way, according to his talent, tempera- 
ment, character, spirit; but it was God who by His 
Spirit made them the men they were. To transform 
human personality so that it becomes capable of 
conveying a divine message in human utterances is 
a greater thing than to dictate the message itself. 
That what now appear to us abnormal psychical 
conditions—visions and voices—accompanied the 
mood of exaltation in the prophet when in the pres- 
ence of God we cannot doubt. These features have 
reappeared in religious revivals at different times 
and places. Necessary they may have been to the 
prophet himself to assure him that it was God’s 
message which he was conveying in the moral and 
the spiritual intuitions which came to him. The 


330 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


value of the prophetic inspiration for us now does not 
lie in any of these accompaniments, but in the 
prophet’s moral and religious discernment, a dis- 
cernment which was a quickening and a heightening 
of his personal capacities, and not a suppression of 
them. To attach importance to the abnormal as a 
proof of God’s activity more convincing than this 
elevation and expansion of human personality is not 
religion, but superstition. God’s activity is most 
manifest where He reproduces in men His own per- 
fection in the measure in which they can receive it. 
That there was a succession of prophets, that we can 
discern a progressive revelation in their utterances, 
that these utterances were related to the signs of 
their times, is a concurrent argument, a threefold cord 
which cannot be broken, that’God was indeed in this 
nation fulfilling a purpose central to human history. 

(5) The fulfilment of this purpose is in Jesus Christ. 
We best understand the revelation recorded in the 
Old Testament as a Godward movement of man 
and a manward movement of God, coming to a unity 
in the God-man, perfect realisation of manhood, and 
perfect revelation of God. In the first section of 
this volume the fact of Christ has already been dealt 
with. The New Testament is the literature of the 
revelation of God in Christ, either the testimony to 
what He was, did, suffered, and achieved in His 
earthly manifestation, or the confession of what He 
proved in the living experience of believers as the 
living Saviour and Lord in His heavenly presence 
and power. ‘To all believers was given in measure of 
their receptivity the Spirit of God. An inspired 
succession of solitary prophets is followed by an 
inspired community. There is no repetition of that 
objective manifestation of the divine truth and grace 
in the historical activity of Jesus Christ, but there is a 
continuation of that redemptive revelation of God in 
the subjective experience of believers within the 
community of the Spirit of God. It will be the 
purpose of the last section of this volume to show how 
God’s purpose is being fulfilled until the end. 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 331 


(6) {t is necessary in view of current controversies 
to consider the question of the inspiration of the 
Bible, although it is a misfortune that that term has 
ever come to be used; for inspiration is personal, 
and writings are inspired only as they are written 
by inspired persons. 

(1) In view of differences of readings in different 
Mss., and renderings in different versions (as, for 
instance, the Massoretic Hebrew, and the Septuagint 
Greek), it is simply impossible to maintain the theory 
of verbal inspiration. To fall back on the inspiration 
of the original autograph is a counsel of despair, as 
we do not possess it, and are not likely ever to recover 
it. To insist on inerrancy in the record of fact is to 
ignore the discrepancies that the historical documents 
themselves disclose, as between Kings and Chronicles, 
and between the Synoptic and the Johannine reports ; 
the methods of composition which an examination 
of the writings makes evident; and the improbability 
of the continuous miracle which would have been 
necessary to preserve the writers from error in the 
conditions under which their work was accomplished. 
To claim that the whole Bible is infallible in practice 
or doctrine is not only to involve the believer in 
mental, moral, and religious confusion, but to deny 
what is not a defect, but a merit of God’s method of 
revelation, that it 1s progressive, adapted to the stage 
of human development reached. Polygamy and 
slavery are not expressly condemned in the records 
of these practices, and yet the Christian conscience 
has learned by the enlightening of God’s Spirit to 
condemn them. Christendom has suffered incalcul- 
able injury by assigning equal authority to the pre- 
paratory and to the consummating revelation. Christ 
alone had the Spirit without measure, and He alone 
is infallible as Revealer of God and Redeemer of men. 
By Him must the worth of every part of the Bible be 
tested, and if this is done it will be impossible to 
maintain that every part is of equal authority for 
thought and life. 

(1) What we mean by the inspiration of the Bible 


332 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


is that it is fully adequate to make wise unto salvation 
(2 Tim. i. 15), to equip the man of God for every 
good work (v. 17), to lead him who seeks salvation 
to the Saviour, and to nourish the eternal life in the 
saved through closer intimacy with the living Lord. 
It is inspired as it inspires, as it becomes the medium 
of the Spirit of God to enlighten, quicken, renew, 
purify, and perfect the soul. It is the literary channel 
through which the redemptive revelation in Christ is 
permanently preserved and universally diffused in 
the world; but precious as the vessel may be, we 
must not confuse it with the treasure which it contains 
and conveys, the Living and Mighty Word of God, 
the self-manifestation and self-communication of God 
to men. We must not substitute an inspired book 
for inspired men, nor inspired men for the God who 
inspires them. If all Christians were themselves more 
inspired by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth and 
wisdom, of confidence and courage, of holiness. and, 
most of all, love, the nature, character, and purpose 
of God, they would not contend as they unhappily 
do about theories of inspiration. A theory, however 
tenaciously or even pugnaciously asserted, which is 
not sustained by and does not give evidence of an 
experience of the Spirit’s presence and power, and a 
corresponding character in the fruits of the Spirit, 
has no convincing force. 

(iii) The theories which have been briefly touched 
upon and which have been rejected must be so dealt 
with because they can bring only confusion and con- 
flict into Christian thought and life. It is such 
theories, and such theories alone, which bring the 
Bible into antagonism to science and history, reason 
and conscience. To oppose Genesis to geology is to 
court defeat for the religion which offers such a chal- 
lenge to assured knowledge. To harmonise by mental 
violence records that are discordant is only to irritate 
those who know and use approved historical methods 
of inquiry into the records of the past. To assert 
on the basis of a number of texts a conception of God 
which a sound reason must reject is to turn an ally 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 333 


into an enemy of religion. To justify conduct which 
offends conscience on the ground that it is recorded 
without condemnation in the Bible is to provoke the 
man of sound moral judgment into unbelief. Many 
of the difficulties which a popular scepticism puts 
forward to the distress of anxious inquirers after 
truth disappear altogether when the true purpose 
of revelation, and consequently the real nature of 
inspiration, have been recognised. What has here 
been written has not been written to depreciate the 
Bible, but rather that the Bible may be properly 
appreciated as the human literature, which does not 
supersede any of the manifold activities of the per- 
sonality of man, but is the channel of that gift of God 
to man which man by no search or striving could 
for himself attain, the knowledge of and the life in 
God. 


II 


(1) Because there is evil in the world the revelation 
of God must be redemptive, in the widest sense of 
redeeming men from pain as well as sin, error as well 
as hate, social wrong as well as individual vice. The 
redemptive revelation of God is consummated in 
Christ and His Cross. This transcendent saving act 
of God has already been fully discussed in the first 
section of this volume. But regarding it some things 
may here be added. 

(1) Christ must not be separated even in His Cross 
from the previous history which finds its fulfilment 
in Him. As has already been indicated, the process 
of redemption had been going on from the beginning, 
and God had again and again proved Himself the 
Saviour God. In nature there are redemptive pro- 
cesses: there is the vis medicatrix naturae; how 
speedily does nature restore the ruin which earthquake, 
fire, or tempest have wrought! whenever a living 
organism is injured the process of healing is begun ; 
when this process fails, the failure attracts our atten- 
tion; but we do not realise how many bodily hurts 
are cured, how many a danger to health is escaped. 


aa 


334 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Pain itself is a signal of a danger against which pre- 
cautions may be taken, or a disease for which the 
means of cure must be used. If, as reason conjec- 
tures, but faith affirms, there is immortality for man, 
then even out of death God saves into life, and we 
have ground for hoping into more abundant life. In 
history there are redemptive events, the deliverance 
of a nation or nations from cruelty, oppression, 
bondage, despair. The Bible is the record of the 
succouring hand of God. But it is in the personal 
life of man, his recovery from sin and its consequences 
by penitence and faith, which the Spirit of God inspires, 
that there is the clearest proof that it is not God’s will 
that any should perish, but that all should be saved, 
that judgment is His strange work, and that in mercy 
is all His delight, that He has joy in forgiving. 

(11) Christ on His Cross must not be separated from 
God, the Son from the Father. That the sacrifice 
might be complete, that the Saviour might experience 
the final consequence of sin, it was needful that He 
should pass through that desolation of soul which 
was uttered in the cry of dereliction; but we should 
not so understand that experience as. to infer that 
because He felt forsaken by His Father, God had 
forsaken Him. In that hour the Father was suffering 
in and with the Son. Any theory of the Atonement 
which represents Christ as doing something for man’s 
salvation apart from God, or to bring about a change 
in God, is false. “ Christ’s Cross is not a sacrifice man 
offers to God, but a sacrifice endured by God that by 
it man might be saved. God is a fellow-sufferer with 
man, centrally, supremely in Christ and His Cross, 
but always and everywhere also where men suffer. 
Even the sorrow sin brings God shares, and surely 
because it is brought by sin it is the greater sorrow 
to God. And also, because God shares it, when man 
realises what it costs God, as is most clearly and fully 
shown on the Cross, God’s passion becomes redemptive, 
restoring man through penitence and faith to Himself. 

(iii) If we thus see God in Christ sharing the Cross, 
we shall put a far deeper meaning into the redemptive 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 335 


character of God’s revelation. It has sometimes been 
understood as meaning that it is the communication 
of the truth that God as Father loves and forgives, 
which, when believed, saves. But’ the truth of God’s 
eternal nature is revealed, not in words, but in action 
and passion in history, in the grace of the Lord Jesus 
Christ.» God’s revelation redeems, because God in 
Christ is revealed as doing and suffering all that is 
needed to change the heart of man by disclosing God’s 
judgment on sin in the sacrifice by which forgiveness 
is conveyed. This subject need not be pursued 
further in this connection, as it has been adequately 
discussed, but so much must be said to ward off a 
shallow and narrow intellectualist conception of revela- 
tion and redemption. ‘The sacrifice which saves is a 
real experience to God, as He is immanent in the 
history of man as fellow-sufferer with men. 

(iv) What is thus revealed in history is what belongs 
to the eternal nature of God. He is ever sacrificial 
and redemptive love; to use the symbolic language 
of Scripture, ‘the Lamb was slain from the founda- 
tion of the world,’ ‘ in the midst of the throne there 
is a Lamb as it had been slain’ (Rev. xii. 8, v. 6). 
It was this sacrificial and redemptive love, sufficient 
to solve the problem of sin and pain in the world, that 
was the motive of creation. God could create a race 
that could fall into sin and bring on itself the curse 
of sin, because He could redeem by a love more 
effective in the realm of the spirit than any creative 
power, wisdom, or goodness.» As we gaze on the 
Cross of Christ, the heavens are opened, and we 
discover as ultimate and final in the world Love, which 
saves because it suffers. 

(2) A new light is thrown on the mystery of pain ; , 
salvation is by sacrifice; and we must not assume) 
that the sole reason for this is sin. For it is in sacrifice | 
that what is best in man and (in reverence even we 
dare to add) in God is exercised and expressed. 

(i) It is worth while to consider how in the pre- 
paratory revelation this truth was reached. The 
assumption common in morality and religion is this, 


Se eae 
ae 


336 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


that the righteous prosper, because God rewards them, 
and that the wicked perish, because God punishes 
them. This is the assumption of the _ historical 
records, and this is the problem of the Book of Job. 
The Psalter (Ps. i.) begins with an unqualified asser- 
tion of it. When it was discovered that it was not 
so in fact, God was invoked to take vengeance on 
sinners: ‘ Men of the world, whose portion is in this 
life, And whose belly Thou fillest with Thy treasure : 
They are satisfied with children, And leave the rest 
of their substance to their babes’ (Ps. xvn. 14). A 
solution of the problem was sought in two directions. 
The last verse of this psalm suggests a solution, or 
rather, as the language is ambiguous, one or other of 
two closely related solutions. The words (v. 15, * As 
for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness: I 
shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness ’) 
mean either that the inner life of communion with 
God compensates for all outer sorrows or sufferings, 
or that in a future life there will be compensation 
for the ills of the present. It depends on the date 
which we assign to the psalm whether we can adopt 
the first or the second interpretation. These are 
related to one another, for it is the present communion 
with God which gives assurance of future blessedness. 
The other fact in which a solution was sought was 
expressed in the popular proverb the use of which both 
Jeremiah and Ezekiel rebuke : ‘ The fathers have eaten 
sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge ’ 
(xxxi. 29 and xviil. 2). Both oppose to it an un- 
qualified individualism, inadequate in itself to solve 
the problem, but in the circumstances needing to be 
emphasised. If the fathers do not suffer for their 
sins, their children will. In Psalm li. a significance 
is found in suffering. The sorrow of penitence secures 
God’s forgiveness: ‘The sacrifices of God are a 
broken spirit : a broken and a contrite heart, O God, 
Thou wilt not despise’ (v. 17). But in Isaiah lin. the 
highest solution is found; the righteous saves by his 
sufferings. That prophetic vision became; historical 
reality in Jesus Christ. These previous solutions 


i i i 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 337 


were part of the truth. ‘There is a moral order in the 
world, sin has its consequences for the individual, his 
descendants, and the society to which he belongs. 
Alike in the inner life with God and in the hope of 
blessedness hereafter there is compensation for present 
sufferings. Good is the grief of the penitent, but best 
for sin’s judgment and the sinner’s deliverance is the 
vicarious suffering of the holy and loving. 

(ii) The suffering does not profit only the sinners : 
the saint who so suffers is made the more a saint 
thereby. In sacrifice personality finds itself in losing 
itself. Were there no pain in the world, where were 
endurance, courage, heroism, venture, sacrifice, com 
passion, sympathy, the finest qualities of the soul o 
man? Pain is not in the world solely because of sy 
as its consequence or its remedy. It was in the world 
before sin entered, it may still be when sin has passed. 
It is more deeply rooted in the constitution of the| 
world than sin is, because it is in the very nature of 
God as sin is not, and cannot be. Even in a sinless 
world there might have been an Incarnation, and an 
Incarnation which was also a participation in such 
pain as might have been in a sinless world. So long 
as we think of pain as an unmitigated evil as sin is, we 
shall not be able to see clearly in the world the revela- 
tion of God, which by the very constitution of the world, 
and in the very nature of God, must be redemptive, 
salvation if not from sin, yet from pain, by sacrifice, 
from an unblessed pain by a sacrifice thrice blessed. 
We must go to the most Christian of the poets of 
last century for the best expression of this truth: — 


‘Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou—so wilt 

Thou! 

So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost Crown— 

And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down 

One spot for the creature to standin! It is by no breath, 

Turn of eye, wave of hand, that Salvation joins issue with death ! 

As Thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved 

Thy power, that exists with and for it, of Being beloved ! 

He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand 
the most weak. 

"Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek 


>" 


338 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be 

A Face like my face shall receive thee : a Man like to me 

Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever! a Hand like this hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ 
stand ! ’ 


Browning’s Saul. 
What the poet represents as alone sufficient to meet 
Saul’s desperate necessity, that all mankind needs. 
(3) The revelation of God is not yet ended. God 
has not withdrawn into indifference and inactivity. 
(i) There is not, it is true, a chosen people with a 
history which a succession of prophets is interpreting 
as divine providence. All humanity is now elect of 
God unto salvation, if faith receive the grace freely 
offered; and to all believers the Spirit is given accord- 
ing to their faith. The Son of Man, and Son of God, 
Saviour and Lord, has not been excelled, cannot be 
superseded; He is the universal presence and the 
supreme authority (Matt. xxvii. 18-20). A revela- 
tion more adequate, or a redemption more effective 
than His is not to be desired or expected, indeed cannot 
be conceived. But with Him as Head there is being 
formed on earth a body in which He by His Spirit 
lives, a temple for God worthier and fitter than any 
temple which human hands could fashion (Eph. 1. 23, 
ii. 21). As the Son was manifested, so through Him 
there shall yet be the manifestation of the sons of 
God (Rom. viii. 19). That is being actualised univers- 
ally which was in promise and potency individually 
realised in Jesus Christ, the firstborn among many 
brethren. Just because God is by His Spirit so 
immanent in men, this revelation of God has not the 
objectivity which the revelation consummated in the 
historical manifestation in Christ had, but it is not 
on that account the less real. For a succession of 
inspired prophets there is an inspired community of 
believers. or the providence then discovered in the 
history of their nation there is a universal purpose of 
God, the Kingdom of God, being fulfilled. For the 
solitary Son there is that Son as the Captain of 
salvation leading many sons unto glory (Heb. i. 10). 
According to the teaching of Jesus Himself the mission 


REVELATION AND REDEMPTION 339 


of the Spirit is subordinate to the mission of the Son, 
the interpretation and application of the revelation 
in Him (John xvi. 13-14), but it is no less a continua- 
tion of His mission, a completion of the revelation of 
God in the world to men. * The love of the Father 
revealed in word and deed, action and passion, life 
and death, sacrifice and salvation in the grace of the 
Son is being progressively realised in mankind by the 
community of the Holy Spirit.. This subject will be 
dealt with in the next section. What alone needs 
at this point to be emphasised is that*there is con- 
tinuity of revelation. God has not ceased to reveal 
Himself, and it is the same God who is being by His 
Spirit revealed in individual and collective Christian 
experience as was revealed by the prophets, and in 
the Son.» He is realising His Fatherhood towards 
mankind in reproducing His perfection in His sons. 
(11) With change of method there is the same 
essential character ; the revelation is still redemptive. 
The sacrifice of the Cross was offered once for all; 
it need not be repeated, nor can it be added to; 
but the grace which it conveys must be appropriated 
by faith. Believers must be crucified with Christ in 
their penitence, so as to die unto sin, and be raised 
again in their faith, so as with Him to be alive unto 
God (Rom. vi. 3-10). While that Cross stands 
solitary in its supremacy as the manifestation of the 
holy love of God, judging and forgiving sin, and thus 
atoning for it, the eternal nature of God, which is 
there temporally expressed, and the historical process 
of which this is the culmination continue. God is 
still suffering with man as He is saving man: and 
He is suffering in His saints, whose sacrifice is making 
that sacrifice of Christ universally and permanently 
effective unto salvation. God has no other method, 
and it is to depreciate the method of salvation by 
sacrifice to desire or expect God to substitute any 
other. Second Adventism, when we examine it closely, 
really involves unbelief in God and man, unbelief that 
God can save in this method, and unbelief that man 
can be so saved. Whatever the consummation of 


340 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


human history may be, it will not be by a miraculous 
interference of the divine omnipotence, but by the 
completion of the redemptive revelation of God, the 
Saviour seeing of the travail of His soul and being 
satisfied (Is. li. 11). Here again we must insist on 
the consistent and courageous application of the 
regulative theological principle, that we must interpret 
God in His nature, character, and purpose through 
Christ and Christ alone, as Father, as holy love, as 
love sacrificial and redemptive, active only for the 
ends and by the means congruous with what the 
Iather is seen to be in the Son. Thus and thus alone 
can we have a genuinely and distinctively Christian 
theology. To possess such a theology is not merely 
an intellectual interest; it is a practical necessity. 
We can have the Christian experience, the Christian 
character, the Christian society, the Christian con- 
summation, as all thought and life are guarded by 
Christ’s revelation as Son of God as Father. The 
love of the Father through the grace of the Son ean 
alone issue in the community of the Spirit. 


SECTION III 
THE COMMUNITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 


INTRODUCTORY 


(1) ‘fue third clause in the Apostolic Benediction 
has not received the attention in Christian thought 
and life which should properly be assigned to it. 
. The love of God (the eternal reality) revealed in the 
erace of the Lord Jesus Christ (the historical media- 
tion) is realised in the community of the Spirit (the 
social personal experience). The movement of God 
manwards in revelation and the movement of man 
Godwards in religion unite in the typical divine- 
human personality, Jesus Christ; the purpose of 
God in Him, however, is not completed until through 
His mediation the community of the Spirit, the family 
of God on earth, is fully constituted.v To the historical 
facts and the doctrinal truths of Christianity much 
more attention has been given than to the Christian 
experience, character, and society which are the 
results of the manifestation of Godin history. Ececlesi- 
astical controversy has on the one hand been con- 
cerned about the doctrine of the Church; individual 
pietism has on the other hand concerned itself about 
the doctrine of the Spirit with good intent, but not 
sound judgment. In the theological development of 
the Church an adequate importance has not been 
attached to the doctrine, and it has not been so 
exhaustively treated as the other themes. The con- 
tinuity of the doctrine of the Spirit with the doctrines 
of God and Christ has not been sufficiently emphasised, 
and the doctrines which are usually mentioned in the 
third section of the historical creeds have not been 
unified as they should have been in the doctrine of 
the Spirit. Two recent writers, Dr. Denney! and 
Dr. Thomas Rees,? so identify the Spirit with the 


1 The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, pp. 807-12. 
* The Holy Spirit in Thought and Experience, pp. 210-11. 


2 


o4! 


THE COMMUNITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 348 


Living Christ as virtually to deny the necessity of a 
separate treatment of the two doctrines. The writer 
of this volume is convinced that this tendency is 
altogether mistaken, and that Christian life no less 
than Christian thought loses because the doctrine of 
the Holy Spirit is neglected. All that belongs to the 
experimental, practical, social realisation of the Chris- 
tian revelation and redemption is bound up with the 
‘presence and activity of the Spirit of God in the 
individual, the Church, and the world. A recognition 
of the truth that God is continuing and completing 
His revelation and redemption of man in Jesus Christ 
by the Spirit is a necessary condition for such a state- 
ment of the doctrine of the Trinity as will make it 
not a burden on the thought, but a boon to the life 
of Christians. Whether he succeed or not the writer 
will at least endeavour so to deal with this theme as 
to give effect to this conviction. 

(2) The consideration of the subject must be begun 
with a statement regarding the nature and operation 
of the Holy Spirit, based on the Holy Scriptures, but 
also illustrated by the history of the Church. In the 
next place must come the doctrine of the Church, 
treated not controversially, but constructively, not 
primarily as an historical organisation, but as a 
spiritual community, invisible in its essence, but 
made visible in its witness, worship, and work. This 
rightly 1s placed before the treatment of individual 
experience and character, as it is by the testimony 
and influence of the Church that the Christian life 
is individually begun, the personal relation to Christ 
as Saviour and Lord being historically mediated by 
the Christian community ; and as it is continued and 
completed in the fellowship and service of that com- 
munity. Since the Christian experience and character 
do not fulfil their promise, or realise their possibility 
in this earthly life, Christian faith and love reach 
beyond ‘ the bourn from which no traveller returns,’ 
in Christian hope, the earnest of which is the presence 
and working of the Spirit in the individual experience 
and character (2 Cor. 1. 22, v. 5; Eph. 1. 14). As, 


344 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


however, Christian personality is by its very nature 
and ideal social, dependent on and contributory to 
the Christian society, and as the Christian society 
is in the world to make all mankind one family of 
God, the Christian hope is not and cannot be merely 
individual. It must expand into the expectation of 
the Kingdom of God, established on earth, and yet 
only consummated in heaven, the temple of humanity, 
a habitation for God by His Spirit (Eph. ii. 21-22). 
Kcclesiastical and eschatological questions about which 
there has been so much debate will be approached 
from “his highest standpoint, God’s fulfilment by His 
Spirit of His purpose in Christ. 


CHAPTER I 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 


(1) Ir this volume dealt with Biblical Theology it 
would be necessary to treat fully the doctrine of the 
Spirit in the Old and the New Testament; but for 
this essay in Constructive Theology a brief summary 
must suffice. 

(i) The Old Testament doctrine has as its back- 
eround the animism which is an almost universal 
element in man’s religious beliefs. Whether it is, 
as was once assumed, the most primitive philosophy, 
or explanation of the world and man, or there lie 
behind it still simpler modes of thought, as is now 
maintained, such as animatism, the consciousness of 
being alive in a world alive, or dynamism, the sense of 
power in self and things around, or teratism, the feeling 
of wonder or mystery, need not now be determined.! 
It is enough for us to begin with anamism, the belief 
in a soul or spirit resident in, active through, and yet 
separable from the body, temporarily in sleep, per- 
manently at death. This view is assumed in the 
earlier account of the creation of man, and brought 
into relation with the monotheistic belief. ‘ And 
Yahweh shaped man from dust out of the ground, 
and blew into his nostrils breath of life, so that man 
became a living soul’ (Gen. 11. 7). The term here 
used is nephesh. A similar term, although it came 
to be used afterwards with a different shade of 
meaning, is ruach. Man in his creatureliness and 
weakness is flesh ; as an individual living being he is 
soul (nephesh) ; as related to, and dependent on God 


1 See The Threshold of Religion, by R. R. Marrett. 
345 


346 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


he is spirit (ruach) ; but we must beware of supposing © 
that man is thought of as composed of ‘three parts, 
and not as presenting three aspects of one whole. 
The term ruach claims closer consideration. ‘ The 
remaining term, ruach,’ says Wheeler-Robinson,! . 
* covers a wider range of usage, in a development less 
easy to trace. It occurs 378 times, denoting (a) wind, 
natural or figurative (131) ; (b) supernatural influences 
acting on man, rarely on inanimate objects (1384) ; 
(c) the principle of life (like nephesh) or of its energies 
(39);  (d) the resultant psychical life (74). The 
classification itself, with the proportion of usage, shows 
that we have to do with something more than a mere 
synonym of nephesh, and this is corroborated by 
certain details of the process of its development.’ 
In the later literature the use of the term is kept ‘ at 
a higher plane of meaning than that of nephesh,’ and 
relates man more closely to God as having his life 
from God. While man is living soul because God has 
breathed spirit into body, God Himself is Spirit with- 
out body. We must now consider the doctrine of 
the Spirit of God. 

(11) ‘ It was enough for Hebrew faith,’ says Wheeler- 
Robinson,” ‘that Nature and history alike are at 
God’s disposal, and for Hebrew experience that man 
is able to rebel against God, though he cannot escape 
from God. The conception of the Spirit of God 
initiates a deeper conception of the relation of man — 
to Him. The term “ spirit”? (ruwach) occurs about — 
134 times in the Old Testament in regard to super- 
natural influences, acting on man in almost every 
case; it is rarely used, as in Genesis i. 2, of influence 
on inanimate objects. The idea of the specific in- 
fluence develops with the idea of God Himself. In — 
its personal use we may trace at least five stages, | 
according to the effect produced, the classification — 
being broadly chronological as well as conceptual. — 
(1) In the earliest literature such phenomena as 


The Christian Doctrine of Man, pp. 17-18. Cf. Rees, op. cit., pp. 1-18. 
* Op. cit., pp. 64-5. 





THE HOLY SPIRIT 347 


madness (1 Sam. xvi. 14), ecstatic prophesying (xix. 
20), or superhuman strength (Judges xiv. 6), are 
ascribed to divine influence. (2) This is also seen in 
remarkable events (Judges vi. 34), or lives (Gen. xli. 
38). (3) To the ruach of God is ascribed the prophetic 
consciousness (Num. xxiv. 2; Ezek. ii. 2), though the 
prophets of the eighth century avoid a term probably 
discredited by some of its alleged manifestations. 
Later on, however, revelation in general is thought 
to be mediated by the ruach of God (Zech. vii. 12 ; 
Neh. ix. 30). (4) To the same source are ascribed 
technical skill (Ex. xxvii. 3) and practical ability 
(Deut. xxxiv. 9) when exhibited In some marked 
degree. (5) Finally, we reach a group of cases in 
which the effect of the rwach of God is seen in more 
general conduct and character, as when the Psalmist 
prays, “ Take not thy holy ruach from me” (hi. 11); 
or the ruach of Yahweh is said to be on one who gives 
himself to the proclamation of the Old Testament 
Gospel (Is. lxi. 1f.).. In this group we reach a direct 
point of contact with the New Testament doctrine of 
the Spirit of God; the outpouring of the Spirit on 
all flesh declared by Joel (1. 28f., ef. Is. xxxii. 15, 
xliv. 8, lix. 21; Zech. xii. 10) is said by Peter to be 
fulfilled in the era inaugurated by Pentecost (Acts il. 
16). The connection in this case is more than verbal ; 
the Old Testament doctrine of the Spirit of God is in 
closest genetic relation to the New Testament doctrine 
of man’s renewal by the Spirit of Christ, and divine 
providence fitly culminates in the experience of 
Christian salvation.’ In some of the uses of the term 
we see the tendency of religious thought to regard 
the abnormal, or extraordinary, as supernatural, and 
so to ascribe it to the direct action of God, as we should 
not do to-day. The illumination of the prophet or 
the purification of the saint we should still regard as 
the work of the Spirit of God in man. This distinc- 
tion is, aS we shall afterwards show, of very great 
importance. J. G. Simpson?! has tabulated the 


1 Hastings’ one-volume Dictionary of the Bible, p. 358. 


348 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


activities ascribed in the Old Testament to the 
Spirit of God : 
Spirit=The life of God 
| 


Manifested in nature Manifested in man 





In reason In righteousness In revelation 


(Israel) 


ate a Dadi | | 
As intelligence As skill | By the prophets By Messiah 


(iii) We must ask this further question: What is 
the relation to God of-the Spirit of God, and of the 
parallel conception of the Word of God? This is 
Schultz’s answer:! ‘ God’s vital force, which is re- 
presented in a concrete way as His breath, proceeds 
from Him, and becomes the source of created life in 
whatever it breathes upon. . .. His word creates 
the world—that is, God’s inner world of thought 
becomes, through his will, the source of life outside 
of Himself. The Spirit and the Word of God are 
represented as forces locked up in God. The Spirit 
appears as very independent, just like a hypostasis 
or person.’ The Old Testament, however, has no 
doctrine of personal distinctions within God Himself. 
The Spirit and the Word are God’s immanent activity 
in the world, often so spoken of as to be distinguished 
from one another, and even from God as He is in 
Himself in His transcendent being. In the later 
conception of Wisdom there seems to be even more 
the tendency to hypostatise, that is, to assign a 
separate existence distinct from God Himself, but 
it remains only a tendency. As the term Spirit of 
God is used in the Old Testament it cannot be regarded 
as due to a separation of God from the world, an 
emphasis on His transcendence; it rather asserts 
God’s connection with nature and man, an emphasis 
on His immanence. But thought has not gone so far 
as to raise the problem of the relation of the tran- 

* Old Testament Theology, Eng. trans., ii. p. 184. 





THE HOLY SPIRIT 349 


scendence and the immanence, the function of the 
Spirit of God in the inner life of God Himself. The 
fuller revelation of the New Testament was necessary 
to challenge the mind of man with this problem. 

(2) The features of the Old Testament representa- 
tion are continued in that of the New Testament. 

(i) The descent of the Spirit on Jesus at the Baptism 
means, as the subsequent Temptation shows, that 
He then became fully conscious of His Sonship, and 
of the accompanying endowment of supernatural 
power (Matt. i. 13-iv. 11). As was the community 
of believers at Pentecost, so was He filled with en- 
thusiasm for His calling, and it was with this enthusi- 
asm He entered on His ministry (Luke iv. 14). He 
claimed to preach as endowed by the Spirit, even as 
did the prophet of old (v.18). His was the Spirit- 
filled life ; the Spirit was not given to Him by measure 
(John i, 34, A.V.), or without measure He could 
impart that gift (R.V.). It was by the Spirit of God 
that He cast out devils (Matt. xi. 28). Thus the 
immanent activity of God was even in the Incarnate 
Son as in other men conceived as the presence and 
activity of the Spirit of God. The significance of 
this truth for the doctrine of the Trinity will need 
to be considered at a later stage of the discussion. 
Jesus promised the Spirit to the disciples as their 
inspiration, when defending themselves against their 
persecutors (x. 20), and bade them wait in Jerusalem 
till ‘ clothed with power from on high ’ (Luke xxiv. 49), 
the baptism of the Holy Ghost (Acts 1. 5). 

(ii) This promise is presented with much greater 
detail in the Fourth Gospel. Here the reminiscences 
of the eye-witness are developed in reflections which 
he believed to be the unfolding by the promised Spirit 
of the meaning of the words of Jesus. It is impossible 
to discuss the passages in John xiv.-xvi. in detail, but 
a summary based on a minute exegesis may be given 
to throw into relief the main truths presented. By 
prayer the Master, in view of His separation from 
His disciples, secured for them another Counsellor 
and Helper (a\\ov mapakdynrov), who will be present 


350 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


to them, and Christ in Him, while unseen by the 
world (xiv. 16-20). (The Spirit is both the Spirit of 
Truth and the Holy Spirit, truth being the means 
used and holiness the aim attained.) As coming in 
Christ’s name the Spirit will continue the revelation 
of God in Him by recalling the teaching already given, 
and adding such teaching as the disciples may need 
(v. 26). This continuation of the work of Jesus by the 
Spirit is to extend to the world, as the disciples who 
have known the whole of the earthly ministry will 
bear a witness which will be confirmed by the Spirit 
(xv. 26-27). Jesus must Himself depart before the 
Spirit can come. (The new phase of the disciples’ 
experience cannot begin till the present phase is over. 
And the new phase will be possible only when the 
work of Christ—His death and resurrection—is ac- 
complished.) The world will be convicted by the 
Spirit in three respects. He will expose the world’s 
sin, its unbelief in the Messiah. He will demonstrate 
the righteousness of the exalted Son of God. He 
will make manifest that it is, not Christ, but the power 
of evil that has been tried and condemned. (The 
convictions of the human conscience in regard to 
the significance of Christ’s death are here represented 
as the Spirt’s work.) In contrast to the work of 
the Spirit ia the world is His work in the disciples. 
Because of their immaturity the Master has left His 
work unfinished. ‘The Spirit will both show them the 
meaning of truths which they have not understood, 
and teach them truths they have not been able to 
receive at all. Not a new revelation is to be given, 
but the revelation already given will be unfolded. 
The Spirit’s function is throughout this passage (xvi. 
7-15) subordinated to the person and work of Christ. 
The clause in verse 18, ‘ He shall declare unto you the 
things that are to come,’ expresses the older view of 
the predictive function of the Spirit, and is probably 
an editorial addition which is inconsistent with the 
context. ‘The Fourth Gospel marks the highest stage 
in the development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit 
in the New Testament. Except in the one reference 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 351 


to prediction, what may be called the supernatural 
elements of knowledge or power disappear; and the 
Spirit’s function is to continue the work of Christ as 
ilumining the minds of the disciples so that they 
should remember and understand the teaching of 
Jesus. The Spirit does not supersede Christ, but 
makes His invisible and inaudible presence real. He 
does not supplant or add to the revelation in Christ, 
but interprets and applies its truths according to 
the disciples’ need. As we shall see, the develop- 
ment of the doctrine in Paul lays emphasis on the 
Spirit’s work of sanctification ; here the stress is on 
illamination. 

* (iti) In the Acts of the Apostles we have a return 
to the more primitive type of representation. (qa) 
The Spirit comes upon and fills the company of 
believers; there is a fresh enthusiasm and a new 
energy ; there are what are regarded as supernatural 
manifestations, some of which we should to-day regard 
as abnormal psychical conditions due to intense ex- 
citement and similar to those which have been 
witnessed at other religious revivals (Acts ii. 1-13). 
The apostles showed a boldness and readiness of 
speech such as was not expected from men not trained 
in the Rabbinic schools (iv. 13), and performed 
miracles in the name of Christ (i. 6, etc.). The 
preaching was with such convincing and converting 
power that large numbers were added to the company 
of believers (11. 40-42). The‘ holy contagion ’ spread ; 
for on the believers in Samaria, won by the preaching 
of Philip, the Holy Ghost fell, when Peter and John 
laid their hands upon them (vii. 14-17). We need 
not assume anything magical; the receptivity for 
the common gift would be stimulated by this contact 
with the representatives of the primitive community 
in Jerusalem. We need not now give the explanation 
of this inward change that at the time these believers 
themselves held. 

(b) As we read the record we frequently meet the 
phrase ‘ filled with the Holy Ghost’ or ‘ filled with 
Holy Ghost’ (with or without the article). Whether 


352 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Dr. Bartlet’s! explanation that the absence of the 
article indicates that not the divine agency but the 
human condition is being described be correct or not, 
yet what is referred to is well expressed by the phrase 
he suggests, ‘holy enthusiasm.’ A religious revival 
with an intense emotional character is the nearest 
analogy to enable us to understand what, consequent 
on Pentecost, the condition of the primitive com- 
munity was. In endeavouring thus to understand 
the subjective condition we are not denying or de- 
preciating the divine agency, the presence and the 
work of the Holy Spirit. There came a certain and 
confident consciousness that the promise of Christ 
had been fulfilled, and that His visible presence was 
being replaced by this invisible Companion and 
Helper. Such a consciousness was accompanied by 
intense emotion, emotion so intense as to break 
down habitual control, and to burst forth in abnormal 
psychic states. That our psychology can offer an 
explanation of the genesis of these states in the intense 
emotion is no challenge of the truth of the conscious- 
ness, its correspondence with reality. Why this ex- 
perience came as and when it did, is also capable of 
psychological explanation. Pentecost was consequent 
on the Resurrection. But time was needed for the 
conviction of the witnesses that Christ was not dead, 
but risen, and was living and reigning, to get firm 
root in their own minds, and to spread to and get 
rooted in other minds, until the certainty possessed 
the whole of the community. He who has been 
engaged in the pursuit of truth knows with what 
glow of feeling he passes from doubt to assurance. 
It was when faith in the Risen Lord was fixed, that 
there was the necessary receptivity for and responsive- 
ness to the divine reality, the Spirit of God promised 
by Christ Himself. It was as believers continued 
together in prayer and meditation and converse that 
this consciousness was spread to all and was strength- | 
ened in each. It is now recognised that a crowd: 
thinks, feels, and acts together, as individuals in it 

1 Acts, in Century Bible, pp. 386-8. 





THE HOLY SPIRIT 353 


would not act alone. It was because they tarried 
together that the promise was fulfilled in this common 
experience. 

(c) There is one feature of the manifestation at 
Pentecost which claims closer consideration, the 
speaking with tongues, * other tongues’ (v. 4). The 
explanation that the writer of Acts gives that foreign 
languages were spoken (v. 11) is now generally set 
aside by even conservative scholars, mainly because 
Paul’s explanation of the phenomenon is so different 
and very much more intelligible (1 Cor. xiv). Jesus 
always refused to work a miracle as a sign from 
heaven to overcome unbelief (Matt. xu. 39, xvi. 4). 
He only used His power when there was adequate 
occasion for it. His were miracles of compassion and 
succour, not of ostentation; such a use of His en- 
dowment He set aside in His refusal to cast Himself 
down from the pinnacle of the ‘Temple (Matt. iv. 5-7). 
Had the apostles on this occasion spoken in foreign 
languages, there would have been a miracle of show 
and not of need. These ‘ Jews, devout men, from 
every nation under heaven’ (v. 5), all spoke Greek, 
the lingua franca of the Jews scattered among the 
Gentiles, even if they had not acquired Aramaic, the 
language commonly spoken in Palestine. Even if 
they knew another language, spoken in the country 
from which they had come, how could they distinguish 
it in the confusion of sound, when in their intense 
excitement the whole company of believers was 
uttering praise at the same time? There is not a 
trace of evidence in the subsequent history that the 
messengers of the Gospel were helped in the discharge 
of their task by a knowledge of the language locally 
spoken. Barnabas and Paul did not understand the 
language of Lycaonia (xiv. 11). It is not God’s 
method to supersede human labour by miracle. 
Peter in his speech makes no reference to any such 
miracle, and the other references to the gift of tongues 
in Acts (x. 46, x1. 15, xix. 6) require no such explana- 
tion. Would the use of foreign languages understood 
by the hearers lead to the charge of drunkenness 


“ 


354 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(v. 13)? In Paul’s letters there are references to this 
gift of tongues as ‘ ecstatic prayer, song, or blessing 
by inspiration, but without the full co-operation of 
the understanding (1 Cor. xiv. 14-17).’? In verse 2 
Paul shows what this speech was: ‘ He that speaketh 
in a tongue speaketh not unto men, but untoGod . . . 
in (a) spirit he speaketh mysteries.’ The tongues to 
be made intelligible to others needed to be interpreted, 
and the ability to do this was also regarded as a gift 
of the Spirit (xii. 80). The impression on the un- 
believing of the speaking with tongues is described 
by Paul in the words: ‘ Will they not say that ye are 
mad ?’ (xiv. 23). It is clearly the same phenomenon 
Paul is describing. ) 

(iv) In regard to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit 
Paul has given an explanation, offered a contribution, 
and set a problem. He has enabled us to understand 
the spiritual gifts as the record of Acts does not. He 
has developed the doctrine of sanctification by the 
Spirit. He has raised the difficulty for our thought 
of the relation of the living Christ to the Spirit. 
(a) We can almost feel grateful for the difficulties and 
perplexities which Paul met with in his ‘ cure of souls,’ 
‘his care of all the churches,’ because in dealing with 
these he has cast light on many dark places in the 
history of the early Church. Had not abuse in the 
exercise of the spiritual gifts in Corinth led to disorder 
in the assemblies for worship, we should not have had 
an explanation of the gift of tongues. 1 Corinthians 
xii. gives us a fuller account of the spiritual gifts than 
any other passage. Paul insists on the unity of their 
source in the diversity of their modes, and the con- 
sequent duty of harmony and not discord in their exer- 
cise. Not individual conceit is to be gratified, but the 


e : ° . | 
common edification promoted. As love is superior to | 


them all, so love is to be the motive, and determine 

the manner and the measure of their exercise. These 

gifts seem to fall into three classes for our thinking. 

(1) There are natural gifts which are stimulated by 

the Spirit; wisdom, knowledge, faith are all normal 
1 Bartlet, The Acts, p. 140. 


ee a 





THE HOLY SPIRIT 355 


activities of human personality ; (2) there are ab- 
normal psychic states, as divers kinds of tongues 
(ecstatic utterances); (3) there are what from the 
description of them we should describe as super- 
natural endowments, such as gifts of healings and 
workings of miracles and prophecy as prediction. It 
may be that modern psychology will enable us to offer 
an explanation of the third class, which will bring them 
more within the range of normal human endowments, 
even if only exceptionally possessed. Paul included 
the governments (or ‘ wise counsels,’ R.V. marg.) as 
well as apostles, prophets, and teachers as spiritually 
endowed. The Christian Church was a community 
of the Spirit, and all members were qualified for their 
respective functions by their diverse gifts. None of 
these gifts was depreciated by Paul; in all he re- 
cognised the presence and power of the Spirit of God ; 
but he showed his discernment in valuing more highly 
the gifts that were used in service than the gifts which 
could be used for show, whereas many of the Corinth- 
ians thought more highly of display than of duty. 
It is a misfortune that the thirteenth chapter has been 
cut off from the twelfth, as it is the climax of the 
argument. The way more excellent than the exercise 
of any gifts is the way of love. This leads us to con- 
sider Paul’s contribution to the doctrine of the Spirit. 

(b) The tendency in the record in Acts, as in the 
churches generally, was to identify the work of the 
Spirit with the abnormal or supernatural manifesta- 
tions. Paul saw the danger, and sought to meet it 
by his doctrine of sanctification by the Spirit. He 
recognised that his own exposition of justification by 
faith in Christ and His atoning death alone might be 
so misunderstood and misrepresented as to be an 
encouragement to moral laxity. The objection to 
his view expressed by him as a question, ‘ Shall we 
continue in sin, that grace may abound ?’ (Rom. vi. 1), 
was no man of straw, set up to be knocked down. 
There was a real danger, and the history of the 
Christian Church has shown the reality of the danger. 
He meets it in that passage by asserting that faith 


356 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


is so immediate a contact and so intimate a relation 
with Jesus Christ that there is identity of interest, 
purpose, and effort. The believer dies with Christ 
unto sin, and rises with Christ to live unto God (vv. 
1-14). This process of inward change is by him called 
sanctification, and the divine agency in the process 
is the Spirit. In the next paragraph we shall con- 
sider how the Living Christ and the Spirit are related 
for Paul’s thought. What now claims emphasis is 
that Paul saw the work of the Spirit more clearly and 
fully in Christian character than in any spiritual gifts, 
and the determining principle of Christian character 
was for him as for Christ, love, which ‘ worketh no 
ill to his neighbour: ove therefore is the fulfilment 
of the law’ (Rom. xii. 10). This love itself, however, 
is not obedience to commandments; conduct follows 
from motive, purpose, aspiration. It is not conformity 
to an outward law; it is transformation by an inner 
life. ‘ The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, 
temperance; against such there is no law’ (Gal. v. 
22-23). Romans xii., after dealing with the exercise 
of spiritual gifts, expounds what is involved in human 
relations by the activity of love unfeigned. In the 
chapter dealing with the Christian life, Christian 
ethics will be discussed more fully, as also the sub- 
jective aspect of this process of sanctification by the 
Spirit. What here demands notice is that in Paul’s 
theology there is a development of the primitive 
doctrine of the Spirit, parallel to that in the Johannine 
writings, but here the stress is on sanctification, and 
there on illumination. But both developments have 
their roots in the Old Testament teaching. The 
prophets spoke the Word of the Lord as illumined 
by the Spirit ; the Psalmist (li. 11) prays that God’s 
Holy Spirit may not be taken from him. 

(c) The problem which Paul’s treatment of the 
doctrine of the Spirit presents is this: Does he con- 
sistently distinguish the Spirit from the Living Christ, 
or is there an occasional identification ? And if he 
distinguishes, how is the immediate contact and 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 357 


intimate communion with the Risen Lord which he 
claims related to the operation of the Spirit within ? 
That he does generally distinguish is apparent. In the 
Apostolic Benediction the community of the Spirit is 
distinguished from the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
and the love of God (2 Cor. xii. 14). In 1 Corinthians 
xii. the diversities of workings are ascribed to the 
same God who worketh all things in all, the diversities 
of ministrations to the same Lord (¢.e. Jesus Christ) 
and the diversities of gifts to the same Spirit (vv. 4-6). 
In the passage which follows dealing with the gifts 
the one Spirit alone is mentioned (vv. 7-11, 18-14). 
As all the members of the body are one with and one 
in Christ, He is the body, and the Spirit pervades the 
body (v. 12). It is through Christ as our peace, who 
through His Cross reconciles to God, that we have 
access in one Spirit unto the Father (Eph. un. 18). 
Again, Jesus Christ is the chief corner-stone of the 
holy temple in the Lord, which is a habitation of 
God in the Spirit (vv. 20-22). From these passages it 
is evident that Paul does discriminate the functions 
of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in man’s salvation. 
But he does not always express himself with such 
care. For instance, in 1 Cor. vi. 11 he places sanctifica- 
tion before justification, and does not assign, as con- 
sistently with his general treatment he should, justi- 
fication to Christ and sanctification to the Spirit, 
but conjoins both in both processes. ‘ But ye were 
washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified 
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit 
of our God.’ In Romans viii. 9-11 the Spirit of God 
and the Spirit of Christ and Christ Himself are used 
as interchangeable terms. Compare ‘Christ is in 
you’ (v. 10) and ‘the Spirit . . . dwelleth in you’ 
(v. 11). He comes nearest to an identification in 
2 Cor. i. 17-18, ‘ Now the Lord is the Spirit: and 
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But 
we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the 
glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same 
image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord 
the Spirit.” We cannot evade the difficulty as Dr, 


358 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Bernard ! does by identifying the Lord with Jehovah, 
for Paul does habitually use the term Lord for Christ, 
even when he has used a quotation from the Old 
Testament, in which the reference is to Jehovah 
(Rom. x. 12-18; 1 Cor. x. 22). The Lord whose glory 
believers behold or reflect, and into whose likeness 
they are changed, is no other and can be no other than 
Christ. What Paul does here state, with an emphasis 
which may lead to misunderstanding, is that faith in 
Christ is so invariably followed by the inward re- 
newal by the Spirit, that the consequence of that 
faith may be directly ascribed to Him who is its object. 
In view of the other passages referred to, we may 
conclude that while there is an occasional ambiguity 
in his language, yet the general tendency of his 
theology is to distinguish Christ and the Spirit. In 
support of this conclusion three considerations may 
be offered. In the Old Testament the Messiah is 
distinguished from the Spirit of God; Jesus Himself 
always spoke of the Spirit as another; and the 
primitive community made the distinction between 
the risen Christ and the Spirit. 

Starting from this conclusion we must, however, 
try to conceive as clearly as we can how Paul distin- 
guished, if indeed he ever thought of distinguishing, 
his life in Christ, or Christ’s life in him, from the in- 
dwelling and inworking of the Spirit. He lives, but 
not he, Christ liveth in him (Gal. 11. 20); to him to 
live is Christ (Phil. 1. 21); he is crucified and risen 
with Christ (Rom. vi. 3-10); he lives and walks by 
the Spirit (Gal. v. 25). We cannot, with Deissmann,? 
relieve ourselves of the task of dealing with Paul as 
a theologian, who was expressing distinctions in his 
own mind when he used different words or phrases. 
First of all we may conjecture that when Paul was 
vividly conscious of the objective reality of Jesus 
Christ the Lord as present with Him in immediate 
contact and intimate communion, he used the terms 
regarding his relation to Christ. When that con- 


1 Expositor’s Greek Testament, ili. p. 58. 
* The Religion of Jesus and the Faith of Paul, pp- 154-5, 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 359 


sclousness was not so vivid, and yet he knew that 
what he was experiencing was of God, he used the 
terms about the Spirit. The historical record, in- 
cluding the vision on the way to Damascus (Acts ix. 
1-9), gave to the Risen Lord a distinct personal reality 
which the Spirit did not and could not possess. 
Christ was objective to Paul as the Spirit was not, 
nor indeed could be. For, secondly, we seem justified 
in inferring that it was by the subjective operation 
of the Spirit in the personal activities of Paul that 
he was enabled with such certainty and intensity 
to realise the objective presence of Christ in and with 
him. A physical analogy may make this plainer. 
The presence of Christ was the Light, and the opera- 
tion of the Spirit so quickened the inward sight of 
Paul that he could behold the Light. God’s Spirit 
in him made Christ so real to him. 

(v) This is a matter of so great importance for 
Christian theology that it demands fuller treatment. 
(a) Dr. Ernest F. Scott! has stated the position 
clearly and fully : ‘ It cannot be made out that Paul 
anywhere identifies the Spirit and Christ. His aim, 
on the contrary, is to keep them distinct, and his very 
phrase, “the Spirit of Christ,’’ which brings them so 
closely together, implies an effort to distinguish. .. . 
Probably it never occurred to him that they could 
be thought of as identical. When he spoke of Christ 
he had before his mind a personal being, the apoca- 
lyptic Messiah who had been manifested in Jesus. 
When he spoke of the Spirit he thought of a divine 
power which had been vouchsafed to men in conse- 
quence of the work of Christ. Nevertheless, he is 
unable to keep the two conceptions entirely separate. 
The functions which he ascribes to the Spirit are 
similar to those of Christ, and sometimes in the same 
sentence he passes almost unconsciously from the 
one idea to the other. This confusion is the more 
inevitable as the Christ of Pauline thought is the risen 
and indwelling Christ.’ The two conceptions, accord- 
ing to Scott, are merged, because for Paul the indwell- 

* The Spirit in the New Testament, pp- 182-6, 


360 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


ing Christ as a divine being discharges all the functions 
usually assigned to the Spirit. Nevertheless, Paul 
retains the distinction because (1) the belief in the 
Spirit was included in the primitive Christian tradi- 
tion; and (2) he was himself exceptionally endowed 
with the spiritual gifts. While there seems to be only 
a confusion, Scott maintains that ‘on a deeper view 
the effect of his virtual identification of Christ and 
the Spirit is to make both of them infinitely more 
significant. The historical Christ becomes a universal 
presence, dwelling in the hearts of men; while the 
Spirit ceases to be a vague supernatural principle, 
and is one, in the last resort, with the living Christ.’ 
While we cannot separate Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit in our faith in the one God in all, through all, 
and over all, the question still remains whether we 
cannot enrich our conception of that one God by 
distinguishing, as far as our thought can, the functions 
and activities of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in 
revelation and redemption. This question is answered 
with a very decisive negative by two recent theological 
writers, Dr. Denney and Dr. Thomas Rees. 

(b) Dr. Denney ? states his position with his usual 
decisiveness. ‘As has often been pointed out, in 
Romans viii. 9-11 the Spirit of God, the Spirit of 
Christ, and Christ Himself are practically indistin- 
cuishable. It is all one if we can say of people that 
the Spirit of God dwells in them, or that they have 
the Spirit of Christ, or that Christ is in them. All 
these are ways in which we can describe the life of 
reconciliation as it is realised in men. They make it 
plain that the explanation of that life is divine, and 
they prevent any misapprehension about the Divine 
Spirit by frankly indentifying the indwelling of the 
Spirit in the Christian sense with the spiritual in- 
dwelling of Christ Himself. But there is no justifica- 
tion in this for representing the Spirit as a third 
person in the same sense as God and Christ. Paul 
never knew Christ except as Spirit, except as a being 
who could enter into and tell upon his life as God 

' The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 311, 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 361 


Himself entered; and his whole concern in this 
passage is not to distinguish Christ and the Spirit, 
but to show that nothing is entitled to be recognised 
as really Spirit among Christians if it is distinguish- 
able from Christ and from the divine power with 
which He acts in the souls and in the life of men.’ 
As the statement by Dr. Scott and the previous 
discussion have shown, Dr. Denney, with his char- 
acteristic impatience, and almost intolerance to ideas 
not congenial to his own type of piety, evangelical 
but not mystical, is not accurate either in his exegesis 
or his theology. As the last chapter of this book will 
try to show, the use of the word * person’ in the 
doctrine of the Trinity is open to misconception, as 
the term has acquired a connotation to-day which it 
had not for those who framed the creeds, and tends 
to substitute a tritheism for the belief in the triune 
God. It need not be maintained, then, that we are 
to speak of the Holy Spirit as a ‘ person.’ The one 
God is personal for our thought, though not a * person ’ 
as an individual among others, seeing He as Life, 
Light, Love is in all and through all and over all, 
because the Universe can be most intelligibly ex- 
plained in terms of personal nature, purpose, and 
activity. The Risen Christ as continuing personally 
the historical reality of the earthly Jesus is even more 
definitely personal for our thought than God. We 
cannot think of the Holy Spirit so definitely as personal, 
but He as the Spirit of God must be conceived as 
personal as God is. That there can be no separation 
of the Spirit from Christ, His activities from Christ’s 
presence, is no adequate reason for not taking up into 
our constructive theology the distinctions which the 
writers of the New Testament make. The writer 
himself, as will afterwards be shown, attaches very 
ereat significance and value to these distinctions in 
attempting to construct a doctrine of the Godhead. 
(c) Dr. Rees! is even more emphatic, not to say 
dogmatic. ‘If the Spirit is conceived as another 
divine presence, distinct and different from Christ, 
1 The Holy Spirit, p. 211, 


362 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


operating as a distinct activity and in a different 
province of religious experience, it so far ceases to 
be the Spirit of Christ, and the presence and activity 
of Christ are therefore neither universal nor co- 
extensive with religious experience. If, on the other 
hand, Christianity is the universal and final religion, 
if all knowledge and communion and action of God 
are mediated to men through Jesus Christ, then the 
Holy Spirit for Christian thought and experience 
cannot be separate or distinct from Christ Himself, 
in His living presence and power in the hearts of men, 
and the Church burdens itself in vain with the formula 
of three hypostases which it inherited from Greek 
theology.’ 

What the author of this passage confuses is the 
dogmatic formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, 
for which the writer of this volume does not here 
enter any defence, and the experimental basis of the 
doctrine as it is presented in the New Testament, 
which should be the starting-point of any constructive 
theology. The presence and activity of Jesus in His 
earthly life was of one kind ; His presence and activity 
now is of another kind: the one sensible, the other 
spiritual. It is the Spirit of God dwelling and working 
within the soul who makes the soul receptive for and 
responsive to that spiritual activity of Christ. We do 
not separate and yet we distinguish: Christ, objec- 


tively manifest as Revealer of God and Redeemer of © 


men, is subjectively experienced in illumination, re- 
generation, sanctification by the Spirit of God. Again, 
we may believe that Christianity, as it 1s the final, 
so it will be one day the universal religion; but it is 
not yet. known to all men, and ‘all knowledge and 
communion and action of God’ are not yet mediated 
to men through Jesus Christ, unless we use the term 
in a less definite sense than the names themselves 
demand, namely for the historical reality, whom faith 
confesses as God Incarnate. God by His Spirit is 


enlightening and cleansing men, even beyond the ~ 


: 
: 
| 


reach of the Christian Gospel, although where Christ | 


is known as Saviour and Lord that inward experience . 





THE HOLY SPIRIT 368 


is so much surer and wider and deeper. We may 
limit the term Holy Spirit to the Spirit of God as 
active within Christian experience; but we must not 
deny, as Dr. Rees does, or appears to do, by ambiguous 
use of language, the operation of the Spirit in the 
religious experience, to which Jesus Christ is not yet 
known. 

(3) In the preceding pages no attempt has been 
made to give a complete account of the teaching of 
the Bible on this subject. Only the main features 
have been noticed, which are directly relevant to a 
constructive theology for to-day. The development 
of the doctrine in the Church may be even more 
briefly treated. 

(i) As the Church passed more and more from the 
Jewish environment to the Gentile, its theology was 
more and more affected by the intellectual influences 
of that environment. The doctrine of the Logos dis- 
placed the doctrine of the Messiah for two reasons : 
(1) The significance of Christ was thereby widened ; 
it became cosmic as well as human (Col. 1. 15, 16 and 
John 1. 3-5 already show this expansion of thought) ; 
(2) The relation of Christ to God was made more 
immediate; He by nature belongs not to the creatures 
but to the Creator. This development not only met 
an intellectual demand for a rational creed, but also 
a religious need, the certainty of a universal salvation 
for manin Him. Asin Paul and John the conception 
of the Risen Christ in His manifold activities cannot 
be rigidly distinguished from the operations of the 
Spirit, so to the Logos-Christ are attracted many of 
the functions hitherto assigned to the Spirit. *° The 
theology of the Church,’ says Dr. Scott,! ° attached 
itself in increasing measure to the foreign conception, 
and one by one the attributes of the Spirit as creative, 
revealing, life-giving, were transferred to the Logos. 
How are we to account for this surrender ? For one 
thing, the idea of the Spirit, in the course of its long 
history, had acquired a well-defined meaning and 
could not be readily adapted to the new theological 

1 The Spirit in the New Testament, pp. 190-1. 


364 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


needs. . . . But there was a further and more cogent 
reason for the preference given to the Logos doctrine. 
It came into Christian thought with a philosophical 
background. It had gathered into itself the results 
of centuries of Greek speculation on the mystery of 
the world. By the adoption of this doctrine it was 
possible to link the Christian message with the whole 
religious movement of the time, and thereby to deepen 
its significance and strengthen its appeal to the 
Gentile mind.’ The reason for the waning of the 
doctrine of the Spirit was not merely theological; it 
was religious also. The enthusiasm of the early days 
passed away; believers became less conscious of the 
Spirit’s presence and-power; the doctrine fell into 
the background with the experience. The Church 
was consolidated as an institution, and tradition and 
convention took the place of the freshness and fullness 
of life. Prophets even came to be regarded with 
some suspicion, as the Didache (chapter xi.) shows, 
and in some cases there was ground for the suspicion 
that they were ‘ making merchandise of Christ.’ The 
local officers of the Church gradually strengthened 
their position, and asserted their authority. The hope 
of the Second Advent faded into ‘ the light of the 
common day.’ The Christian Chureh settled down 
to a permanent existence in this world, and began 
to adapt itself to its environment. The ebb-tide 
followed the full; and the doctrine of the Spirit 
always comes into prominence in a time of religious 
revival, and recedes when the experience of such a 
period passes away. 

_ (i) This general statement may be illustrated in 
some details.1 Hermas identifies the Son of God and 
‘the Holy Pre-existent Spirit.” But Ignatius main- 
tains the distinction. ‘ Have we not one God, and 
one Christ, and one Spirit of Grace that was shed 
upon us?’ asks Clement of Rome (1 Cor. 46). As 
in Matthew xxvii. 19, baptism in the Didache is 


1 The History of Christian Doctrine, by G. P. Fisher, may be consulted for 
further details. See also Harnack’s History of Dogma, Eng. trans., iv. pp. 
108-37, | 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 365 


‘into the name of the Father and of the Son and of 
the Holy Ghost’ (vii. 1). The Apologists were so 
influenced by the conception of the Logos, that no 
distinctive function was left in their theology for the 
Holy Spirit. While Justin distinguishes the Spirit 
from the Father and Son as subordinate, the activities 
of the Logos are so described as to leave no room for 
the Spirit ; even the conception by the Virgin Mother 
is included (Apology, 1. 33). Irenaeus too subordinates 
the Spirit to the Son, as the Son to the Father; but 
is vague about the Spirit’s work. Clement of Alex- 
andria uses the phrase‘ the Holy Triad’ (Strom., v. 14), 
and speaks of the Spirit as a distinct hypostasis, but 
does not define His relation to the Father and the Son. 
‘Origen leaves the question open whether the Spirit 
has been created or not, assigns divine dignity to Him, 
but subordinates Him to the Son. A peculiarity of 
Origen’s teaching is that he confines the activity of 
the Spirit to the souls which He renews and sanctifies 
(De Princip., 1. i. 5), \The Father’s sphere is universal 
‘existence, the Son’s the rational realm, and the 
Spirit’s the Christian community. It was Tertullian 
who supplied the Latin termimology for the doctrine 
of the Trinity, a term which he 1s the first to use. He 
has, however, a descending Trinity. ‘ The Spirit is 
third from God and the Son, as the fruit out of the 
tree is third from the root, and as the branch from the 
river is third from the fountain, and as the apex of 
the sunbeam is third from the sun’ (Adv. Prazw., 8). 
The Spirit was generally conceived either as a divine 
power, or if regarded as personal, then as entirely 
subordinate. The existence of the Spirit was recog- 
nised on the authority of the Scriptures, but the 
doctrine had no basis in present experience. | 
(iii) Even Athanasius in the first decade of the 
Arian controversy never thought about the Spirit. 
It was when the Arians used the general agreement 
regarding the inferiority of the Spirit to the Son as 
well as the Father as an argument for the subordina- 
tion of the Son to the Father, that he was forced to 
face the question. After 358 Athanasius affirmed 


366 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


that the Spirit was Oeds époovous, not that he had 
any interest in the doctrine of the Spirit, but because 
such a declaration seemed necessary to give logical 
consistency to the doctrine about the Godhead, and 
the Son’s relation to the Father. This view was 
affirmed at the Alexandrian Synod of 362. Mace- 
donius, the Bishop of Constantinople, was regarded 
as heretical because he taught that the Holy Spirit 
was a creature subordinate to the Son, and his followers 
received the nickname of Pneumatomachians. But 
even the Cappadocians (Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory 
Nazianzen, and Basil), although they advocated 
Athanasius’ formula, confessed the absence of any 
available tradition, advised the greatest caution, and 
maintained that the formula should be kept as a 
secret doctrine. The exposition of the doctrine in 
this school tended to tritheism: the Gregories, for 
instance, compared the relation of the persons in the 
Godhead to that of three men to their common 
humanity. This statement must be qualified as 
regards Gregory of Nyssa, however, since, as a Plato- 
nist, the common humanity is for him not a mere 
class name, but a reality. The relation of the Father 
to the Son was described by the term generation ; 
for the relation of the Spirit to the Father the termin- 
ology of the Fourth Gospel is adopted, exeuyus or 
éxmépevors. The Father alone is cause (atror) ; 
the Son and the Spirit are effects (aimuara). Never- 
theless, for Gregory of Nyssa, there is a mutual per- 
vasion (zepiyepnows) of the persons, so that there is 
an inseparable unity. In later Greek thought sub- 
ordination was more insisted on, and thus the differ- 
ences were emphasised. The apy7 in the Kast always 
remains with the Father. The Creed of Constantin- 
ople (although it did not originate in the Council, 
held 381, but was developed out of a confession 
composed by Cyril of Jerusalem before 350) formulates 
the othodox belief in the East on the doctrine of the 
Holy Spirit. It is now generally known as the Nicene 
Creed, of which it is an enlargement. The article — 
dealing with the Holy Spirit may be quoted. ‘8. Kat — 





THE HOLY SPIRIT 367 


els TO Ilvevpa To “Aywov, TO KUpLov, Kat TO CworroLoy, TO 
Ek TOL TATpPOS EKTropEvopmeEvoV, TO oY Hatpi kat Ti@ cupTpo- 
okuvovpevov Kat ouvdogalomevov, TO Twatnoav dia Tov 
mpopytav. It is to be observed that, following the 
Scriptures, functions are again assigned to the Spirit 
which the Apologists had transferred to the Logos. 
(iv) John of Damascus tried to bring the Eastern 
doctrine nearer the Western by minimising the differ- 
ences of the persons and emphasising the unity of 
nature, but the subordinationism and the consequent 
tendency to tritheism remained. For where differ- 
ences are emphasised, the unity of the Godhead has 
to be preserved by an insistence on the subordination 
of the Son and the Spirit to the Father, in whom the 
monarchy inheres. Where the unity is put in the 
forefront, the differences must fall into the back- 
sround. This is the difference between the Greek 
and the Latin formulations of this doctrine. In 
Augustine’s De Trinitate it is the divine unity which 
is made most of, and the persons are distinguished 
only in their relations to one another. He would 
gladly have left all exposition of the subject alone, 
had not the common faith of the Church required the 
recognition of the differences of the three persons 
within the divine unity. ‘ Dictum est tres personae, 
non ut illud diceretur, sed ne taceretur’ (De Trin., 
v.c. 9). With the theology of the West he affirmed 
the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the 
Son. This difference between the Kast and West 
became matter of acute controversy. Photius in 867 
charged the Western theologians with an innovation, 
and even with the falsification of the Constantino- 
politan creed by the addition of the word filioque. 
This addition was first made in Spain. The Greeks 
became suspicious even of the modification 61a rod 
Tiov. The Athanasian Creed marks the full develop- 
ment of the doctrine in the West. It has now become 
a mystery of the faith, which has to be accepted on 


_ the authority of the Church as the condition of salva- 
tion. The differences in the conception of the relation 
of the persons in the Godhead may be summarised 


368 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


as follows. The earlier doctrine was that the Spirit 
was subordinate to the Son as the Son was to the 
Father ; and the later Greek that both Son and Spirit 
were dependent on the Father, the one as generated, 
the other as proceeding. The later Latin affirmed an 
equality of the three persons in insisting that the 
Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as the Father. 
These differences may be represented in the following 


Way -— 
Father Father Father 
| ho hee 
, tag fh ta 
Son Son Holy / \ 
| Spirit WAG 
Oc Son Holy Spirit 
Holy Spirit 


Although the doctrine will be discussed constructively 
afterwards, this comment may here be added. All 
the Scripture statements would lead us to say that 
the Holy Spirit comes from the Father through the 
Son. The revelation of the Father in the Son is 
realised in individual and collective experience through 
the Spirit. 

(v) At the Reformation there was a movement 
comparable to Montanism. Carlstadt with his fol- 
lowers, carfied away by their fanaticism, made the 
Spirit independent of the Word, and claimed His 
authority for the innovations they proposed. Calvin 
based the authority of the Scriptures as of divine 
origin, not on external proofs, but on ‘the testimony 
of the Holy Spirit.’ This inward witness certifies 
the inspiration of these writings. The Reformers 
accepted the doctrine of the Trinity as formulated in 
the creeds, but of the Athanasian Creed Calvin says 
that no legitimate church would have accepted it, 
since on this subject ‘ we ought to philosophise with 


great sobriety and moderation’ (Jnst., 1. xiii. 21). — 
The Arminians, opposed though they were to Calvin’s — 


theology, did insist on the necessity of regeneration 
by the Holy Spirit. The Synod of Dort limited the 


a . 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 369 


operation of the Holy Spirit, described as inscrutable, 
to the elect only, so that in them only does the Atone- 
ment become efficacious. There was much discussion 
in the theological schools about the nature of this 
operation of the Holy Spirit. John Cameron excited 
opposition, though his substantial orthodoxy was after- 
wards admitted, by teaching that the Spirit acts not 
directly on the will, but through enlightening of the 
intellect ; and somewhat later Pajon further developed 
this view, by adding to the Spirit’s use of the Gospel 
as influencing the intellect, also the circumstances of 
the individual’s life as providentially appointed for 
the purpose of his regeneration. The Quakers gave 
a central position to the doctrine of the Spirit. It is 
by the working of the Spirit that the truth in the 
Scriptures is made effective; and further truth may 
be added by the Spirit which illumines all men. 
Wesley, whose theology was Arminian, insisted on 
the necessary agency of the Spirit in conversion and 
sanctification, the attainment of the Christian perfec- 
tion, which he held was possible for all believers. 
James Morison in 1840, in opposition to Calvinism, 
asserted what were known as the three universalities : 
God’s love for all, Christ’s death for all, and the 
Spirit’s working in all. With this declaration this 
historical sketch may fitly end. 

(4) It is much to be regretted that the doctrine of 
the Spirit has not received the attention which it 
deserves from instructed and competent theologians, 
and that so much of the literature of the subject 
comes from a narrow pietism. The attitude of the 
two writers already referred to, Dr. Denney and 
Dr. Rees, is greatly to be regretted, as there is at 
present a favourable opportunity for giving to the 
doctrine its rightful place in Christian theology. 
Simply to substitute for the operations of the Spirit, 
as the Holy Scriptures and Christian theology have 
usually described them, the activity of the Risen 
Christ, would be to deprive us of data, valuable not 
only to theology, but even to religion. 

(i) As has already been indicated, the reason why 

2A 


870 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


the doctrine of the Spirit fell into the background in 
the second century was that Christian experience 
relapsed from the enthusiasm of the Apostolic Age 
into a traditional and conventional profession, real 
but not intense. That it has had so little place in 
Christian thought is due to this, that the presence and 
power of the Spirit have not been greatly prized in a 
great deal of Christian life. In the Eastern Church 
speculative interests replaced the experimental, and 
even salvation was metaphysically conceived; in the 
West ecclesiastical authority became too dominant 
to allow the free movements of the Spirit, except 
sporadically. At the Reformation the spiritual move- 
ment was only too soon caught and held in the fetters 
of a Scriptural dogmatism. The historical interest 
which was so characteristic of last century concen- 
trated attention, needfully and rightly at the time, 
on the historical personality of Christ, His revelation 
of God and redemption of man as fact; and the whole 
course of the discussion in this volume shows that 
the writer fully appreciates the value of this tendency. 
There is a danger, however, of externalising the 
Christian religion, unless to the historical interest 
there is added as its complement the experiential ; 
the historical reality must be appropriated and assimi- 
lated as personal experience, individual and collective. 
Psychology and sociology are the two mental sciences 
of greatest interest to-day, and the aid of both can 
be invoked in developing the doctrine of the Spirit. 
As Christian theology should be quickly responsive 
to the intellectual tendencies of the age so as to 
commend its Gospel to thoughtful men, there seems 
to be need both for a revival of interest in the doctrine 
of the Spirit, and encouragement to the theologian 
to use the mental resources of the age to make the 
doctrine more intelligible. Accordingly, the following 
constructive considerations are offered. 

(ii) As the starting-point is experience, individual 
and collective, we are concerned here with the economic 
and not the ontological Trinity, not with God as He 
is in Himself, but with God as revealing and imparting 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 371 


Himself to man. In the last chapter of this volume 
an attempt will be made to state what seems pos- 
sible with our human limitations about the nature 
of God, as we can infer that from the revelation of 
God to man, and the activities of God in that 
relation. 

(iii) In that activity it does seem to the writer that 
we ought still to distinguish the operations of the 
Spirit and the activities of the Risen Christ. We 
should follow the older tradition of the Holy Scriptures 
and not the development in the Early Church of the 
doctrine of the Logos by which the functions of the 
Spirit were transferred to the Logos. For in the 
first place there was a living experience behind that 
tradition about the Spirit, both individual and col- 
lective; and the change of emphasis, which was 
partly the result of the waning of that experience, 
was also partly the cause of that experience waning 
still more. 

Secondly, the substitution of the Risen Christ even 
for the Spirit, toward which there is a tendency in 
the Pauline and Johannine theology, seems to be 
beset by some theoretical as well as practical dis- 
advantages. There is often a confusion of the sphere 
of activity of the Christ and the Word or Logos. 
The term Christ should not be used of the pre-existent 
Son in the Godhead, but of the historical personality, 
the God-Man, who historically revealed God and 
redeemed man; and we should not speak as if the 
Christ were present and active before the Incarnation, 
or since the Ascension, where the Gospel of His revela- 
tion and redemption has not yet been preached. The 
more general activity of God in the thought and life 
of man should be described as the work of the Spirit 
of God. This is urged not in depreciation of the 
function of the Christ, but in order that the distinc- 
tiveness of His work as Revealer of God and Redeemer 
of man should not be merged in and confused with 
this less adequate manifestation of God by His Spirit 
apart from the Christ, and that the latter should not 
be regarded as a substitute for the former, and so the 


372 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


motive of evangelisation of the world be weakened. 
Whatever the heathen had, or now have, of enlight- 
ening and quickening by the Divine Spirit, they have 
not the truth and the grace of the Word Incarnate, 
the Crucified Saviour, the Risen Lord. But even 
in Christian experience it is desirable to maintain 
the distinction between the objective revelation of 
God in His redeeming love, completed in its essential 
import in the historical reality of Jesus the Christ 
our Lord, and the interpretation and application of 
that revelation subjectively in the experience and 
character of believers; for this carries with it the 
danger of our placing on a level of the same authority 
our subjective impressions and the objective com- 
munication of the character and purpose of God. 
For the sake of Christian life as well as thought it 
is well to maintain the distinction. 

Thirdly, the Johannine teaching about the Spirit 
asserts what we should not forget, that the revelation 
of the Spirit does not complete the revelation of the 
Son in adding to it new truth or fresh duty, still less 
in any way superseding it, but only in making its 
content intelligible, and its influence effective in the 
individual believer and the community. There is 
permanence and finality in the revelation of Christ, 
there is adaptability and progressiveness in the Spirit’s 
interpretation and application. Is it not well for us 
to keep the two aspects of a truly and fully divine 
activity apart in our thought, though they blend in 
our experience? It is not suggested that the in- 
dividual believer should attempt to distinguish in- 
himself what is the work of the Risen Lord and what 
the work of the Spirit; but Christian theology not 
only may, but should do so. : 

Fourthly, by this distinction we enlarge our con-— 
ception of God. God is the eternally and infinitely 
transcendent, yet in His relation to man immanent, 
because in the Son God reveals Himself to us as 
Father and redeems us unto Himself as children in 
the objective historical reality of Jesus the Christ 
our Lord; and that is not all, because in the Spirit’ 





THE HOLY SPIRIT 373 


He dwells and works in our innermost life, so that 
our faith, hope, and love are not merely a human 
response to that revelation and redemption in Christ, 
but God’s own activity in us. If we leave out the 
doctrine of the Spirit there is the danger of our 
thinking of our Christian life as only the impression 
and the influence upon us of the historical reality, 
and not as the expression of the divine life imparted 
to us by the Spirit. 

(iv) It has already been indicated how ambiguous 
is the sense of the term ‘ person’ as applied to the 
Godhead, and how much more difficult it is for us to 
think of the Holy Spirit as person, as we can think of 
the Father or Christ; for when we think of the Father 
as personal we are really thinking of God in His entire 
manifestation and activity in nature and _ history, 
revelation and redemption, and not of the Father as 
individually distinguished from the Son or the Spirit ; 
and when we think of the Son as personal we are not 
thinking of Him as individually distinguished from 
the Father, but we are thinking of the historical 
person Jesus Christ our Lord. But just because the 
Spirit is God most immediately related to our own 
inner life, and most intimately communicating His 
own eternal life to us, we cannot so objectify God to 
ourselves as Spirit, apart from Father and Son, and 
even apart from ourselves in whom He dwells. This 
does not mean, however, that we make the Spirit a 
power or an influence that is impersonal, for what 
can spiritual power or influence be but personal ? 
Impersonal spirit is a vague abstraction. Godi as 
Spirit dwelling and working in us is just as personal 
as God or Christ, for He is God’s activity within, and 
it is the things of Christ He takes and imparts to us. 
~What must constantly be insisted on is that we do 
not separate what we distinguish. We do distinguish 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as complementary modes, 
activities, or ‘ persons’ (in the sense of the creeds and 
theologians who know their business, and not the 
vulgar sense of the popular tritheism); but we do 
not separate them, for it is the one God who acts, 


374 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


and He alone is perfect personality. This subject 
must be further pursued in the last chapter. 

(v) This chapter does not complete the doctrine of 
the Spirit, as this whole section deals with the work 
of the Spirit. The Church is the community of the 
Spirit, and the believer as sharing the common life 
is a member of the Church. In the Christian life, 
the Spirit is ever active, whether it be in experiences 
which come ‘ with observation,’ such as religious 
revivals and individual conversions, or in the un- 
observed development of Christian faith, hope, and 
love. It is this Christian life which is the basis of 
the Christian hope, both in affording assurance of it 
and indication of the character of what is to be hoped. 
Lastly, it is by the Spirit, transforming individuals 
and societies, that the Kingdom of God will come, and 
at last God shall be all in all. 


CHAPTER Il 
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 


THis chapter is not in any way concerned with 
ecclesiastical organisation, with creeds, codes, polities, 
rituals, orders, although reference may be made to 
these matters when relevant to the subject. So far 
as the distinction can be maintained, it 1s not the 
historical institution but the spiritual creation with 
which we are here concerned. It is the spiritual 
creation which must always be the standard of judg- 
ment for the historical institution, for 1t cannot be 
maintained that the latter has always and everywhere 
been ‘a copy of the pattern in the Mount,’ and that 
leaders and teachers in the Church have never been 
blind or disobedient to the heavenly vision. But on 
the other hand, it is from the imperfect image that we 
can rise to the perfect idea, and that as the image 
becomes less imperfect the perfect idea will be more 
clearly apprehended and fully appreciated. It is, 
then, with the Church as the body of Christ, the 
community of the Spirit, that we have primarily to 
do, but we must base doctrine on history. 

(1) The fact that the word éxxdyoia (ecclesia) is the 
Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Kahal (oop) reminds 
us that the Christian Church has Jewish as well as 
Gentile antecedents. The Greek Kcclesia was a gather- 
ing of citizens called out from their homes to some 
public place for common counsel or action. The 
Hebrew Kahal was a gathering of the Israelites 
especially for some sacred purpose. The preparatory 
revelation was to a nation, chosen and called and 
separated from other nations for the fulfilment of 


the divine purpose. The perfective revelation is also 
376 


376 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


to a society, gathered out of the nations, and united 
not by one blood, but by one Spirit. 

(a) When Jesus called men it was not to be individual 
disciples, indifferent to, or separated from one another, 
but into a company of disciples. Individual teaching 
and dealing there was; but the message and the 
mission were entrusted to the company. The distress 
which the jealousies and rivalries of the disciples 
caused Jesus, and the solicitude He showed in rebuking 
and removing these (e.g. the washing of the disciples’ 
feet, John xiii. 1-17), prove how much importance 
and urgency He attached to the unity of the disciples. 
It was to the assembled believers that the experience 
of Pentecost came; and belief was followed by bap- 
tism, the initiation into a society separated from the 
world; and after baptism, by the laying on of hands, 
there was a consciousness of the possession of the 
common treasure of the Christian Church, the fullness 
of the Spirit, the enthusiasm and the energy of the 
new life. Even when the Christian Church expanded 
beyond Jerusalem and Christian societies were formed 
in other cities, the unity was maintained ; 1t was the 
same Spirit which was the common possession. In- 
dependency or Congregationalism has insisted on the 
independence of the local congregation; and in so 
doing has seized on the historical accident, and lost 
hold of the spiritual substance. The Church is not 
made up of a voluntary association of a number of 
separate churches; the local congregation can call 
itself a church, possessing the privileges and dis- 
charging the functions of the Church, only because 
it is the Church in local manifestation and activity. 
Its rights and duties are not derived from its separate- 
ness, but from its unity with all Christian congrega- 
tions in the one Church. Sohm,! than whom there 
is not a greater authority on these questions, states 
the New Testament position very distinctly. ‘ The 
faith of Christians sees in every assembly of Christians 
gathered together in the Spirit the whole of Christen- 

! Kirchenrecht, pp. 20-1, quoted by Dr. Mason in Essays on the Early 
History of the Church and the Ministry, p. 20. 





THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 377 


dom, the people of God, the universal society. Upon 
these grounds every assembly of Christians, great or 
little, which meets in the name of the Lord, is called 
Ecclesia, the gathering of the New Testament people 
of Israel. The general assembly of all the Christians 
of the same place bears the name Ecclesia because it re- 
presents, not an assembly of this local community, but 
an assembly of all Christendom (Israel). In the same 
way, an assembly of the community belonging to one 
house. Thus there is but one Ecclesia, the assembly 
of all Christendom; though this one Church has 
innumerable manifestations.’ Spatial separation was 
not, however, allowed to destroy the spiritual unity. 
There was the faith in the one Saviour and Lord ; 
there was the common possession of the one Spirit ; 
there was the universal itinerant ministry of the Word 
—the apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists (as well 
as the local oftices—elders or bishops and deacons) ; 
there were the apostolic letters of counsel and com- 
mand, assurance and comfort; there was the collec- 
tion (also called the kxowwvia, 2 Cor. vill. 4) among 
the Gentile churches for the poor in Jerusalem, to 
which Paul attached such importance that he was 
willing to risk his life in Jerusalem that he might 
present it in person; there were the letters of com- 
mendation of the Christian brother from one con- 
eregation to another; there was the generous hos- 
pitality to any Christian visitor. The Council in 
Jerusalem is an evidence of the determination to 
preserve unity in maintaining liberty (Acts xv.). 
There was only one Church even as regards external 
organisations, so far as there was any organisation, 
and still more as regards inward inspiration. Whether 
the words are the words of the historical Jesus or not 
(the writer believes they are), the aspiration of the 
Church as well as the purpose of its Head is expressed 
in them: ‘ Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which 
Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, even as 
we are’ (John xvii. 11). 

There is one revelation of God and one redemption 
of man in Jesus Christ, and that can be made actual 


378 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


and effective and victorious in the world in one Church, 
the body of Christ, the community of the Spirit. It 
is to be observed, then, that the New Testament gives 
warrant for the use of the term Church only of the 
one body, the one community, and of the local con- 
gregations only as its local manifestations and activi- 
ties. In the Apostolic Age there was the Jewish and 
the Gentile type of Christianity ; but the Jews who 
observed the Law and the Gentiles who were free of 
the Law did not separate and form denominations. 
For the use of the term Church for a denomination 
the New Testament offers no justification. It may 
be claimed, however, that as local separation did 
not destroy the unity, neither does theological or 
ecclesiastical, and that each denomination is a dis- 
tinctive manifestation and activity of the one Church. 
Although it may now be impossible to alter common 
usage, yet the writer thinks it would be a great 
advantage to clearness of thought if the term Church 
were reserved for the spiritual unity of all believers, 
the term congregation were used for the local associa- 
tion, and the term communion for the denomination. 
To call Nonconformist denominations bodies, as 
Anglicans in England sometimes do, is not only 
offensive, but it is a denial of the central conception 
of the Church as necessarily one body. According 
to the New Testament, then, faith in Christ means 
and cannot but mean inclusion in the one society ; 
all who were in the spiritual community were also 
within the organisation for witness, worship, and 
work, in which that community was manifest and 
active in the world. The individual relation to Christ 
and the Spirit was mediated by the Christian society. 

(11) The one Church was the community of the Spirit. 
The Spirit was the common possession of the believers 


in Christ ; the gifts of the Spirit were for the common _ 


good, not for individual exaltation or ostentation ; 
all the activities of the Church were directed and 
controlled by that Spirit ; and ‘ the fruit of the Spirit 
was love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, good- 
hess, faithfulness, meekness, temperance’ (Gal. v. 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 379 


22-23), nearly all virtues with a distinctly social 
reference ; in the exercise of all the gifts love showed 
‘ the more excellent way’ (1 Cor. xii. 31). While on 
the one hand the national limitations of the Jewish 
religion had been set aside, and on the other the 
individualism of the later prophets (Jeremiah and 
Kizekiel) in asserting the value of each soul had been 
confirmed, yet from the very beginning Christian life 
showed itself to be by its very nature social; there 
was not a subjugation of the individual to the society, 
as in Plato’s Republic, but a realisation of the 
individual in the society. It was as brethren and 
sisters in Christ Jesus that believers realised their 
relation to God as His children. Two consequences 
flowed from this mutual relation of men as determined 
by their common relation to God. 

Firstly, the differences which had before been the 
occasions of division were transcended in the common 
life in the Spirit. The agelong antagonism of Jew 
and Gentile was removed (Rom. 1.16; Eph. u. 11-22). 
While the institution of slavery was not at once 
abolished, yet master and slave came into such a 
mutual relation as brothers in Christ, that its abolition 
was in principle and motive assured (Philemon). It 
would have brought moral scandal in the Church had 
traditions and conventions in regard to the relation 
of the sexes, especially the position of women, been 
at once disregarded (2 Cor. xi. 2-16, xiv. 34-36) ; but 
the spiritual equality recognised held the promise and 
the power of the purification of the relation from 
pagan corruption, and the elevation of women to a 
liberty and dignity which, without the safeguard of 
Christian character, would have been impossible (Eph. 
v. 22-88). 

Secondly, the differences of capacity, disposition, 
and character, conditioning the variety of endowment 
as regards the spiritual gifts, contributed to the unity 
of the Church; it became the more a body, in which 
the members were able by the variety of their gifts to 
discharge not only different, but even complementary 
functions. In Romans xii. and 1 Corinthians xu. 


380 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Paul works out in some detail this analogy of the 
body. There is what may be called a common con- 
sciousness in this body in the mutual love, interest, 
sympathy, solicitude of the members for one another. 
The one Spirit inspiring all in their individual life 
and work constitutes them not only into an organism 
of mutually dependent parts, but into a community 
in which the parts are conscious of their relation to 
one another in the whole. 

‘When we ask what made possible this transcend- 
ence of the divisions so persistent in human society, 
and this exaltation to conscious unity, characteristics 
so often and largely absent from the Christian Church 
in its subsequent history, the answer must be given 
in the terms of the New Testament; believers were 
‘ filled with the Holy Spirit.’ There was a vivid 
consciousness of the Spirit’s presence and power, and 
the accompanying intense enthusiasm and abounding 
energy. The body because of this consciousness of 
community in the Spirit had a vitality and vigour 
such as has seldom, alas! marked the history of the 
Christian Church since. A physical analogy may be 
of some use here. The form of energy, heat, can 
be transformed into the form of energy, power, 


which does work, as the steam in the engine. So a. 


high spiritual temperature is a condition of. a_strong 


spiritual activity. “Distinct vision, intense emotion,” 


and vigorous action go together. There must be 
certainty of truth if there is to be abundance of grace, 
and abundance of grace is necessary for victorious 
power. We need to learn the lesson the New Testa- 
ment 1s fitted to teach us that a cold or a lukewarm 


Church can never rise to the height of its calling ;~it™ 
must be aglow with conviction and courage. This™> 
description of the Christian Church of the Apostolic 


Age at its best, as the greatest of the apostles con- 
ceived it, and as its worthiest members strove to make 
it, is an ideal which the Christian Church needs to 
keep before itself in all ages. ) The fullness of the Holy 
Spirit, and the human certainty, confidence, and con- 
secration which He inspires, alone can make the Church 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 381 


the society in its unity transcending all that divides 
men from one another, and in that unity also pre- 
senting an example of what human society should be 
as the community of which love is the law. 

(111) In Romans xii. and 1 Corinthians xu. Paul is ad- 
dressing himself to a church, and it is of a local congre- 
gation that he uses the analogy of the body, although 
as is evident the one Church is also present to his mind ; 
indeed, he probably never made the distinction which 
the history of the Church has unfortunately compelled 
us to make. In 1 Corinthians xu. 12 he identifies the 
body with Christ; it is Christ Himself who is present 
and active in the one body through all its members filled 
with the Spirit. In Ephesians i. 22-23 the Church is 
described as ‘the body of Christ, the fullness of Him 
that filleth all in all,’ or rather, the fulfilment of Him 
that fulfilleth all in all, for the conception is not static, 
but dynamic, not astate, but a process. (We may com- 
pare John xv. 1-8.) In the activity of the members 
of the Church, moved and equipped by the Spirit, 
Christ Himself is active. He has no other organ for 
the expression of His truth, or the communication of 
His grace, but the Church. It must be Voice, Hands, 
and Feet to Him, to speak His words, do His work, and 
bear His wide-world message. There are religious and 
moral influences in the world apart from the Church, 
as the community of the Holy Spirit continuing the 
historical revelation and redemption; but the dis- 
tinctively Christian salvation for men is mediated, and 
ean be mediated only, by the Church. (The reference 
here is not to any ecclesiastical organisation as the 
exclusive channel of truth and grace, for we are still 
dealing with the community of believers.) The moral 
and religious transformation of mankind can be ac- 
complished by personal testimony, influence, service, 
and in no other way. Hence we may say with all 
reverence that God has willed that the enthronement 
of Jesus Christ as Head over all things to His Church 
can only be effected by His Church, which as His body 
shares, and will still more share, His exaltation. 
Central as Christ Himself is to the divine purpose in 


382 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


nature and history, significant as He is for the inter- 
pretation of the universe as the manifestation of the 
perfection of God, essential as He is to the redemption 
of mankind to become the temple of God, His habi- 
tation by His Spirit, so as His body His Church is 
inseparable from Him in His sovereignty. According 
to the will of God it is also enthroned with Him. 
The Church is the human society, by which and in 
which the purpose of God in Christ and through 
Christ must and shall find its fulfilment. The King- 
dom of God is the supreme end, but the Church is the 
essential means. 

(iv) This is the ideal; how far did the actual fall 
short ? Paul’s letters with their rebukes and ex- 
hortations show that in the churches there were 
erievous defects, crying scandals. The moral corrup- 
tion of paganism and its superstitions affected the 
new converts. But Paul does not, as we do, dis- 
tinguish the actual and the ideal; he sees, despite 
all imperfections, the ideal in the actual. In two 
respects there was a correspondence of ideal and 
actual: all Christians were within the community 
in personal participation in its life and work, and there 
was unity, despite all differences of previous ante- 
cedents. Since the Apostolic Age, to the imperfections 
of experience and character which distinguished the 
actual from the ideal there have been added these 
two defects: not all Christians associate themselves 
with the Church in its witness, worship, and work, 
and divisions have marred the unity of its testimony, 
communion, and influence. Hence the Reformers 
were led to distinguish the invisible Church, the 
community of all believers, and the visible Church, 
as represented by Rome.’ We must admit this dis- 
tinction as a fact; but we should not acquiesce in 
it as necessary or desirable. Christ meant His Church 
to be one, embracing all believers, and realising the 
Christian perfection in all its members, both as visible 
and invisible. We should no more readily acquiesce 
in the exclusion of any believer, or the divisions in 

1 Augsburg Conf., vii. ; Calvin’s Inst., iv. 1-10. 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 383 


the Church, than in the inconsistency of life of profess- 
ing Christians. It is surely the will of Christ that 
the invisible ideal should become the visible actual. 
_~ (v) Just as soul needs body, so does the Spirit need 
organs of activity in the world. The community of 
the Spirit must be expressed in the association of 
believers with one another for their common ends, 
in the institutions which will give permanent expres- 
sion to the purposes. While the inspiration must 
remain primary, yet organisation is necessary to the 
effectiveness of the inspiration, and should in char- 
acter correspond as closely to the inspiration as can 
be. A distinction is sometimes made between the 
power and the machinery of the Church in order to 
depreciate the latter, or, as it is sometimes put, the 
dynamics and the mechanics. But any such opposi- 
tion is absurd. Machinery is necessary to make power 
effective for work : it is only steam in an engine that 
has driving power. There is undoubtedly the danger 
of the machinery being more complicated than is 
needful for the full use of the power available, or the 
machinery may remain when the power is gone. 
Organisation may outrun inspiration. In the Apos- 
tolic Church there was organisation as an effect of the 
inspiration ; the new soul grew for itself a new body. 
It was flexible and expansive, not uniform, but 
adaptable; the intense expectation of the Second 
Advent in that generation kept organisation in the 
background. It is doubtful whether, even if the 
Apostolic Church had had a larger and wider historical 
prospect, the organisation would have been made 
more rigid; for the consciousness of possessing the 
inspiration of the Spirit to meet each emergency as 
it arose would probably have prevented any un- 
necessary limitation of the freedom of the Spint. It 
seems to the writer to be a reading back into the past 
of the conceptions and interests of a later age to 
suppose, as Bishop Gore! does, that either Christ 
Himself or any of the apostles concerned themselves 
about devising an organisation which would be auth- 
1 See The Church and the Ministry. 


384 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


oritative for all time. It was when the inspiration 
waned that the organisation waxed. It was in the 
second century that there were developed the external 
bonds of unity and continuity in the Christian Church, 
the Apostolic Rule of Faith, the Collection of Apostolic: 
Writings, and the Episcopate as an Apostolic Office, 
which in the earliest period the community of the 
Spirit rendered less necessary. . 
(vi) There have thus emerged in the history of the 
Christian Church two tendencies, which are still 
dominant to-day, and are the most difficult problem 
to be solved in the interests of Christian reunion ; 
they may be described in a general way by the terms 
Catholic and Protestant, although in churches claiming 
to be Catholic the Protestant tendency may appear, 
and in churches named Protestant the Catholic. The 
contrast is by no means absolute; it 1s one of more 
or less emphasis, and not of bare affirmation or nega- 
tion. In the Catholic tendency the need of the Spirit. 
is not denied, but stress is laid on historical unity and 
continuity. In the Protestant tendency the need of 
some organisation is admitted, but the unity and 
continuity insisted on is one of the indwelling Spirit. 
The one stands for authority, which may degenerate 
to tyranny; the other for liberty, which may lapse 
into licence. In each party there is more acute 
consciousness of the defects of the other than of its 
own. Geneva, as it were, charges Rome with tyranny, 
and Rome Geneva with licence. It is evident that 
these tendencies are not opposed, but complementary, 
as human history does not present the picture of a 
steadily advancing river, but rather of the ebb and 
flow of the tide. It may have been necessary that 
in the Jewish nation the scribal age should come after 
the prophetic to conserve and distribute the moral 
and religious gains of the prophetic movement. It 
may have been necessary that Fathers should follow 
Apostles to secure for all mankind in subsequent ages 
the apostolic treasures of thought and life. It may 
have been necessary that the period of subjugation 
1 Harnack’s History of Dogma, Eng. trans., ii. pp. 18-93. ti 

y 





THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 385 


of the new peoples of Europe to the discipline of the 
Roman Church should prepare for the period of 
emancipation which has resulted in the many sects 
of Protestantism. Although prophecy is dangerous, 
may we not dare to believe that thesis need not always 
be followed by antithesis, but that there may yet 
be discovered the synthesis of the two tendencies, 
Catholic and Protestant ? Attempting to approach the 
New Testament without prejudice or preference, the 
writer by his studies has been led to the conviction 
that the Catholic tendency cannot find justification 
for the claims it puts forward for a sacrosanct organ- 
isation bequeathed by Christ and His apostles. The 
evidence has to be distorted to force the Catholic 
system back into the Apostolic Age.! If the brief 
period covered by the New Testament is to be decisive, 
exclusively authoritative for every subsequent age, 
then undoubtedly many of the developments in the 
Church must be condemned as corruptions, as many 
zealous reformers have done. No Protestant Church, 
however, can or does reproduce exactly apostolic 
precepts and practices; and if any make that boast, 
it is convicted of ignorance of history, for the past 
cannot thus be reproduced, as changed conditions 
will affect and thwart any attempt at mere repro- 
duction. But if Protestantism stands for the unity 
and the continuity of the Spirit, it needs neither to 
confess as fault the failure so to reproduce the past, 
nor to impute blame to Catholicism for any new 
departures. As in the process of the evolution of the 
universe there is creation and conservation, so in the 
history of the Church we may expect the creative 
and the conservative moments. What needs to be 
sought and striven for is the reconciliation of these 
complementary tendencies. Inspiration need not be 
breaking up organisation, nor organisation be putting 
bonds on inspiration. As God made His world a 
sphere of law and order, so will His Spirit in the 


1 See Lightfoot’s ‘ Essay on the Christian Ministry’ in his Philippians ; 
Hutch’s The Organisation of the Early Christian Churches ; Hort’s The Chris- 
tian Ecclesia. 

2B 


386 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Church sustain authority so far as conservation is 
needed, and stimulate liberty so far as creation is 
desirable. It cannot surely be necessary that these 
tendencies should alternate in history or appear in 
opposed societies; but what the present hour calls 
for is the spirit of reconciliation, not of controversy, 
to approach all differences with a view, not to aggra- 
vate discord, but to restore harmony. 

(vii) The Catholic may still maintain that a historical 
unity and continuity is in his judgment necessary, 
but that does not justify him in refusing a place 
within the one Church of Jesus Christ to the ministries 
and sacraments of communions which can show the 
fruit of the Spirit. The Protestant may still assert 
that what is alone essential is the community of the 
Spirit, and yet recognise as desirable that this com- 
munity be made manifest in the world in the outward 
organisation, so far as is practicable. If the first 
refuse this, he is refusing, wittingly or unwittingly, 
to follow the Spirit’s leading; for where the Spirit is, 
there the Church is. If the second refuse this, he is 
refusing that same guidance in history which has 
shown how much the Church has lost by division, and 
would gain by unity. On the basis of such mutual 
recognition in common faith, hope, and love, there 
could be secured a reunion of comprehension and not — 
compromise. In the history of the Church three types 
of polity have appeared, the congregational, the 
presbyteral, and the episcopal. 

It would be unreasonable to expect the episcopal 
communions to give up the episcopate, which has 
had a continuous history in the Church since the 
second century, and the value of which is estimated 
highly in the communions which possess it. The 
corruption of episcopacy—prelacy—the other Chris- 
tian communions could not be expected to accept, 
as that would exclude all that is distinctive in their 
historical witness, and it was against this corruption 
that their protest was directed. A representative 
and constitutional episcopate could, however, be com- 
bined in one polity with presbyteral councils and — 





THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 387 


congregational liberty in the essential functions of 
the Church, the preaching of the Gospel, the obser- 
vance of the sacraments, and the administration of 
discipline, as both these types have proved their value 
in history, and are too highly prized by the com- 
munions to which they belong to be surrendered. 
Kach type of polity has a contribution to make to 
the common good, and until this comprehensive re- 
union 1s secured each communion should, with charity 
to all, consistently maintain its own witness. If amid 
all these divisions the community of the Spirit has 
persisted, would not the comprehension of differences 
in this more varied unity make more manifest that 
community ; and might not the Church, restored to 
unity, hope for the fullness of life in the Spirit as at 
Pentecost ? 

(2) Having thus endeavoured to describe the nature 

of the Church as the body of Christ, and the com- 
munity of the Spirit as the necessary organ of the 
continuation of the divine revelation and human 
redemption in Christ, as the human society in which 
God discloses His nature as Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit as well as fulfils His purpose for the world and 
man, we may now consider the functions of the 
Church. 
_~ (i) The charter of the Church is given in the com- 
-mission in Matthew xxviii. 18-20: ‘ All authority hath 
been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye 
therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, 
baptizing them into the name of the Father and of 
the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to 
observe all things whatsoever I commanded you : 
and lo, 1 am with you alway, even unto the end of 
the world.’ Even if, as many scholars now maintain, 
these words were not literally spoken by the Risen 
Christ, but express the consciousness of the Church, 
inspired by His Spirit, of its vocation, their value is 
undiminished. 

(a) There are here three functions, the preaching of 
the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, 
(although only one is mentioned), and the mainten- 


388 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


ance of discipline, the observance of all the things 
commanded. John Knox in the ‘ Scots Confession ’ 
of 1560 mentions all three. ‘ The notes of the true 
Kirk of God, we believe, confess, and avow to be— 
First, the true preaching of the Word of God, in the 
which God has revealed Himself to us. Secondly, the 
right administration of the Sacraments, which must 
be annexed to the word and promise of God, to seal 
and confirm the same in our hearts. Lastly, ecclesi- 
astical discipline uprightly ministered, as God’s Word 
prescribed, whereby vice is repressed and_ virtue 
nourished.’ In 1530 Luther and the Saxon Reformers 
in the ‘ Augsburg Confession’ described the Church 
as ‘ the congregation of saints (or general assembly of 
the faithful) wherein the Gospel is rightly taught and 
the Sacraments are rightly administered.’ Article 
XIX. of the Church of England runs thus: ‘ The 
visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful 
men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, 
and the Sacraments be duly ministered according 
to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of 
necessity are requisite to the same.’ In all these 
statements the preaching of the Gospel is put in the 
forefront. Knox’s Confession quite expressly sub- 
ordinates the Sacraments to the Gospel, as Paul very 
emphatically did: ‘Christ sent me not to baptize, 
but to preach the Gospel’ (1 Cor. 1.17). Knox alone 
adds the maintenance of discipline. If in fulfilment 
of that function the Reformed Churches often showed 
more of the legal spirit of the Old Testament than of 
the gracious spirit of the New, it does not follow that 
the Christian experience and character of the members 
of the Church need not be looked after, not with legal 
severity, but with evangelical solicitude. 

-(b) As the Commission was addressed to the Eleven, 
it might be maintained that the functions only of 
the officers of the Church are therein described. But 
what has been said in the previous paragraphs about 
the Church as a society makes such a conclusion 
unjustified. It 1s the whole community of believers 
to whom spiritual gifts are given, and to whom 


—s,. 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 389 


corresponding ministries are entrusted for the common 
God; all believers are members of the one body, 
sharing in its life and its work. While there was the 
universal ministry, there were also special ministries— 
the apostles, prophets, evangelists or teachers going 
from church to church, and the elders or bishops and 
deacons, administering the affairs of the local con- 
eregation. It was a fluid and not a rigid organisation, 
although the apostles preserved their unique position. 
It is evident that whatever equality and liberty of 
all believers there might be within the community 
of the Spirit, yet as a visible society the Church 
needed officers endowed with authority to regulate 
the life and the work of the society. The functions 
are committed not to the special ministers exclusively, 
but to the whole body; and yet, while there is room 
for abundant and varied individual ministry, what 
may be called the corporate functions, what is done 
in the name and by the authority of the whole body 
cannot be discharged by any member as and when 
he pleases, but only by those members whom the whole 
body appoints as its representatives. Accordingly we 
must recognise in dealing with the functions of the 
Church the practical necessity of a representative 
ministry to discharge these functions as corporate, 
and not only individual. We must not assert a 
separation of clergy and laity, or a superiority of the 
one over the other, or still less identify the Church 
with the clergy, but to recognise the ministry which 
represents the Church in its corporate functions is 
not to exalt the minister above the members, but to 
assert the authority of the Church to determine who 
shall, as representative of it, discharge these corporate 
functions. 

(ii) Following the lead of the Confessions of the 
Reformation, we must put in the forefront of the 
functions of the Church the preaching of the Gospel. 
(a) It is regarded by some persons as a proof of their 
intellectual superiority or their greater devoutness 
that they depreciate preaching. The preacher cannot 
say anything good enough to make it worth while 


390 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


for them to hear him, or they go to church to worship 
God and not to hear a man talk. So runs their 
challenge. So far as the preacher justifies by his 
intellectual poverty or his spiritual feebleness such 
a charge, he is failmg in his vocation, and his failure 
is the Church’s reproach that it does not guard its 
pulpits more carefully against incompetence. But 
individual failure does not justify the general attitude. 
Kivery religion which has been founded by a great 
religious personality has spread and grown by the 
preaching of its founder, although that preaching has 
assumed different forms according to the historical con- 
ditions. Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed 
all preached the truth with which they believed them- 
selves charged. Jesus began His Church by preach- 
ing to the multitudes and teaching His disciples. It 
was the preaching of Paul and other apostles which 
carried Christianity from city to city in the Roman 
Kimpire. The modern missionary must also preach. 
Men must believe before they can worship, and they 
will worship as they believe. Worship without the 
faith which the truth and grace of Christ, as pro- 
claimed in the Gospel, awaken, would be a mere 
formality, and sacraments, unless meaning is given 
to them by the Gospel, would sink into a magical 
performance. Ifthe Gospel be a communication from 
God to men by men, it is not to be despised intellectu- 
ally ; the man who looks down on the preacher should 
be prepared to show that the Gospel is not of God, 
and has not God’s authority over reason and con- 
science. As speech is the most effective mode of 
communication among men, God has made it the 
organ of His revelation, and a better we cannot 
conceive. When it is maintained that Catholicism 
prefers sacraments to preaching as a means of grace, 
and Protestantism preaching to sacraments, we cannot 
agree that this is merely a question of preference. 
The Church has decayed when preaching has been 
neglected ; and religious revival and moral reforma- 
tion have followed on the restoration of preaching 
to its foremost place in the functions of the Church. 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 391 


What value the sacraments have for devout souls 
depends on the knowledge they have of the truth and 
erace of Christ through the Gospel, which enables them 
in faith to receive Christ Himself in the Eucharist. 
The sacraments are not depreciated here, as a later 
paragraph will show, but it is the depreciation of 
preaching that is deprecated. 

_~ (6) The most effective argument against this de- 
- preciation is to show what is meant by the preaching 
of the Gospel. First of all, preaching is not a man 
talking, giving his own opinions. It is, as Bishop 
Phillips Brooks defines it, ‘the bringing of truth 
through personality.’! The personality must be 
made what he is himself by the truth; and in preach- 
ing, all he is must be under the dominion of the truth. 
The personality is a representative of the community, 
and speaks in its name and with its authority; and 
therefore only as he is expressing its common faith 
is he discharging its corporate function. We are here 
defining the ideal, and not describing the actual. 
Secondly, the truth is the Gospel. Anglicans often 
find a difficulty in understanding why English Non- 
conformists lay such stress on the Gospel, and ask 
why the stress should not be laid on Christ. If by 
the Gospel be meant a narrow plan of salvation, a 
rigid theory of the Atonement, or even any doctrinal 
statement about the Person and the Work of Christ, 
this reproach would be justified. One reason why 
Nonconformists love the word Gospel is that it throws 
into prominence the evangelical interpretation of 
Christianity—salvation from sin by the sacrifice of 
Christ—rather than the metaphysical, the sacramental, 
or the mystical. But the chief reason is that they 
believe themselves to be following the usage of Paul 
in regarding the Gospel not as speech about Christ, 
but rather as Christ’s speech to men by men. It is 
true that Christ alone is the power and wisdom of 
God (1 Cor. i. 24) unto salvation, but He can be most 
effectually presented to men for their acceptance and 
appropriation in the preaching of the Gospel. Evan- 


1 Lectures on Preaching, pp. 5-6. 


392 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


gelicals have sometimes been too narrow in recognising 
that to a complete presentation of Christ the other 
interpretations are also necessary, that He is the Word 
by whom all things were made (John i. 1-4), that He 
as the Life of God gives Himself to faith in the sacra- 
ments when received in faith (vi. 48-51), that He by 
His Spirit is the presence which brings comfort, peace, 
and joy within the soul (xv. 1-11). But to the writer 
they seem altogether right in insisting on these two 
things, that the Saviourhood by sacrifice is central, 
essential, crucial, and that the most effective means 
of exalting Christ so that He may draw all men unto 
Himself is the preaching of the Gospel (xii. 32). The 
Gospel is itself sacramental; through the physical 
activities of speech and hearing the spiritual good of 
the truth and grace of Jesus Christ is conveyed and 
received. 

(c) The preaching of the Gospel is here used not in 
the narrow sense which is sometimes attached to the 
phrase, but to include all that is done by the Christian 
Church in the way of instructing and influencing men 
by presenting the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. 
The preparatory revelation in the Old Testament and 
the interpretative revelation in the New are both in- 
cluded. It is the total reality of the nature, character, 
and purpose of God, and His relation to man, that is 
the content of the Church’s message ; and it may use 
any means of human communication that will prove 
most efficacious. The theological implications of the 
Gospel and its social applications, Christian experi- 
ence and Christian character, must all be dealt with 
if the whole human personality is to be reached by 
the whole divine reality. Wide, however, as may be 
the circumference, there is, and can be, only one centre, 
Christ as Saviour and Lord; or to change the figure, 
varied as the body of teaching as presented may 
appear, it must have one vitalising soul, and that 
life should be felt in all the parts. In dealing in the 
succeeding chapters with the Christian life, the Chris- 
tian hope, the Kingdom of God, we shall be further 
determining the content of the Church’s message. 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 393 


(iii) The sacraments are signs and seals, and may 
become to the believing recipient channels of grace. 
(a) It may be that many Protestants have failed to 
give to the sacraments the place which belongs to 
them as instituted by Christ Himself, for, despite the 
challenge by some scholars, the authority for their 
observance can be traced to Him, and as having 
served in the Christian Church as a means of spiritual 
blessing. But the Catholic position, in so far as it 
detaches their efficacy from the faith of the recipient, 
and invests them with a mysterious virtue to com- 
municate the benefits of Christ to the recipients apart 
from faith, must be regarded as superstitious, as 
introducing magic rather than mystery. Much is 
made by Catholics of the sacramental principle, the 
conveyance of spiritual good by material channels ; 
and grace is treated as a thing, a medicine and a 
nourishment of the soul, which can be so conveyed. 
But what has already been insisted on must here be 
again affirmed: grace is God’s personal activity in 
our personal experience and character, and material 
channels can convey grace only as faith receives and 
responds to grace. A sunset can convey the beauty of 
God only as the poet or artist is in contact with God. 
He for whom God has no meaning or worth may 
find aesthetic satisfaction, but not spiritual benefit. 
The sacramental principle, rightly understood, does 
not justify the claims made for the sacraments of 
the Church. There are minds in which imagination 
is more dominant than intellect, to whom a symbol 
is more persuasive than a syllogism. As many prob- 
ably are more deeply impressed through the eye than 
through the ear, sacraments have their distinctive 
value. But that the writer can explain only psycho- 
logically as regards their subjective influence, and 
not metaphysically as regards their objective efficacy. 
God cannot give us anything more or better than 
Christ as Saviour and Lord, than His Spirit as dwelling 
and working in our inner life ; and in this respect what 
other can the sacrament offer than does the Gospel ? 
The difference is surely subjective in the apprehension 


394 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


of the recipient, not objective in the communication 
by the Giver. The writer has never yet been able to 
get from those who make these claims for the sacra- 
ments of a mysterious virtue an answer to him in- 
telligible of what the difference is, wherein lies the 
superiority of the sacraments. Bread and wine can 
claim no higher quality materially than the air which 
conveys the sound, and the latter is even more vital 
than the former; and eating and drinking are not 
better than speaking and hearing as physical activities. 
As Christ commanded the preaching and hearing of 
the Gospel no less than the observance of the sacra- 
ments, their superiority cannot lie in their being of 
His appointment. As-one baptized in childhood, the 
writer cannot bear witness to what the experience of 
baptism may mean to those for whom it is the seal 
of a public confession of Christ. For Paul it.meant 
very much, and He assumed that it would mean as 
much for other believers (Rom. vi. 1-11). Of the 
ordinance of the Lord’s Supper the writer can speak 
from experience; it has been to him a means of grace, 
enabling him to realise more vividly the presence of 
Christ, to receive in faith the gifts of His grace, and 
to respond in aspiration, contrition, and consecration 
to the constraint of His love as shown in His sacrifice. 
Far be it from him to depreciate the use of the sacra- 
ments as a means of grace; but what he cannot 
understand is how the sacraments can be regarded 
as superior to the Gospel spoken and heard as bringing 
Christ near, and making Him more real to faith. 
That God’s contact with us passes our comprehension, 
that communion with Him becomes indescribable, 
that a symbol may seem less inadequate to the in- 
effable than a definition—all this may be fully con- 
ceded; but what cannot be admitted is that the 
personal relation of God and man can be mediated 
more effectively by material channels than by the 
channel of the Gospel in which Christ is presented to 
reason, conscience, heart. 

(6) On the question of baptism there is a cleavage 
of opinion. The great majority of Christian com- 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 395 


munions have adopted the practice of infant baptism, 
while all over the world there is a numerous and 
important communion which rejects infant baptism, 
and insists on believers’ baptism (not adult baptism 
only, for a boy or girl may be baptized as soon as a 
personal confession of faith can be intelligently made). 
Baptism by sprinkling is the more common practice, 
while most Baptists insist on immersion. The ques- 
tion of mode is of quite secondary importance. That 
immersion was the probable mode in the Apostolic 
Church may be conceded; but the Christian Church 
need not be bound as regards the outward form. A 
more important issue is raised by infant baptism. 
The Apostolic Church as missionary grew by the 
addition of converts, who were baptized on confession 
of faith. There is no conclusive evidence that when 
the baptism of a household is mentioned in Acts 
(e.g. xvi. 15, 32-34), any children were included. It 
has been argued, however, that it would have been 
in accordance with Jewish custom, which treated the 
family as a unit, that children should be baptized 
with their parents, and that the way in which Paul 
writes about the relation of parents and children 
justifies such an assumption. Be that as it may, 
infant baptism can be justified on broader grounds. 
The children born and bred, taught and trained within 
a Christian home are not to be regarded, as Jews or 
Gentiles could be in the Apostolic Age, as outside of 
the Christian community. They are within its range 
of influence, and may be expected to respond in a 
eradual development, guided and guarded by the 
erace of Christ, mediated by their Christian environ- 
ment till they can themselves consciously and volun- 
tarily receive that grace for themselves in personal 
trust, love, and obedience towards Jesus Christ. The 
parents in their dedication of their children in bringing 
them to be baptized, and the Church in administering 
the ordinance, enter into a mutual pledge to make that 
environment so Christian that the development shall 
at each stage be Christian. Recent psychological 
inquiry has shown the value of such srowth in grace, 


396 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


and in the knowledge and love of the Lord Jesus Christ 
from the earliest years. This is in many Churches 
probably the more general experience than that of 
conscious conversion. Christian faith is reinforced by 
Christian hope in the expectation that the prophetic 
ordinance will find its fulfilment in the after life of 
the child. The ordinance declares symbolically both 
that the child belongs to a race that needs cleansing 
from sin, and that there is grace available for every 
child born into that race, and further that this grace 
can not only be made effective in immediate personal 
relation to Christ, but can be mediated through the 
influence of a Christian environment. The two in- 
cidents which may -be reckoned amongst the most 
beautiful in the Gospels—Jesus receiving the babes 
and blessing them, and Jesus setting the child in the 
midst (Matt. xix. 13-15 and xviii. 1-6)—afford ample 
warrant for such a view of His relation to children. 
If not according to the letter of the Apostolic Age, 
infant baptism is assuredly according to the Spirit 
of Christ. What is here stated is not the Catholic 
doctrine of baptismal regeneration. The ordinance 
works no hidden miracle. But in accord with the 
recognised conditions of the child’s growth, Christian 
influences may guard and guide the child in the 
Christian way. Against this doctrine the Baptist 
protest was justified. The practice of believers’ bap- 
tism has also its full justification. There are many 
Christian lives which begin with a conscious conversion; 
there may be a deliberate and voluntary turning from 
darkness to God’s ‘ marvellous light,’ a passing in a 
crisis of the soul from death in sin unto life in God. 
In such an experience the mode of immersion has 
symbolical appropriateness (Rom. vi. 1-11). Such 
conversion, even apparently sudden, is no less real 
than the gradual development: and the two kinds 
of baptism represent these two types of experience. 
Should there be a reunion of churches—Baptist and 
Non-Baptist—this might be the basis, that that form 
shall be followed which best represents the individual’s 
position, whether born in a Christian home, or con- 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 397 


verted. While the child born within the Christian 
community cannot enter into full fellowship until 
confession is made in seeking membership, until by 
personal decision the dedication of infancy is con- 
firmed, it would be well if there were an ordinance 
to mark that stage; the writer believes that con- 
firmation, which in the Apostolic Church followed 
baptism, should be generally accepted, even in non- 
episcopal churches, as it need not be reserved for 
administration by the bishop. In believers’ baptism 
confirmation might at once follow on baptism. Thus 
would be affirmed the truth that baptism stands not 
only for cleansing but also for renewal by the Spirit 
of God, that the life in the Christian Church is a Spirit- 
filled life. Attaching the importance which the writer 
himself does to the full recognition of the Spirit’s 
presence and action, such an ordinance as confirmation 
would appear to him not an empty form, but a most 
significant witness to a reality too much ignored. 

(c) There does not seem adequate reason for accept- 
ing the contention of a few scholars that Christ Himself 
did not institute the ordinance of the Eucharist as of 
permanent obligation in the Church. Without enter- 
ing on disputed critical questions, it is not at all likely 
that Paul, great as was his authority, could have 
imposed a new practice for which Christ’s command 
could not be claimed. What more beautiful and 
gracious than that He should desire to be remembered 
by His followers in His sacrificial, redemptive grace, 
whenever they met together for their fellowship in 
Him? Itis one of the tragedies of the Christian Church 
that this rite, intended to be a bond of union, has 
become a cause of division. The Roman Catholic 
doctrine of transubstantiation involves both a meta- 
physic and a conception of the Person of Christ which 
is unintelligible and incredible to those who think in 
modern ways. The Lutheran doctrine of consub- 
stantiation, which denies that the elements are changed 
into the body and blood of Christ, and yet maintains 
that blood and body are given in, with, and under 
the elements is also, if less, objectionable, and led the 


398 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Lutheran scholastics into a Christology which is a maze 


of absurdities. On the other hand, the view to which 
many Protestants commit themselves, that the ordin- 
ance is only a commemoration of the death of Christ, 
and that the elements are only symbols of His sacrifice, 


is quite inadequate to the experience which many — 


Protestant believers, among whom the writer reckons 
himself gratefully and gladly, enjoy as they sit, the 
Lord’s guests, at His table. This is the conception 
to which the writer has himself been led. First of all, 
it would be well to banish the ideas of material flesh 
and blood, even if glorified, as that leads us into a 


region of profitless speculation. Secondly, it would — 


be well to avoid speaking of the spiritual presence 
of Christ as excluding a corporeal. If the Resurrec- 
tion means anything, it means that the whole person- 
ality of Christ conquered death, and has entered into 
the unseen world, not with the natural but with the 
spiritual body. We know nothing of the conditions 
to which such a spiritual body is subject, and specula- 
tions are vain. We must not then affirm a corporeal 
presence, neither are we entitled to exclude it. Let 


us be content with saying that it is the whole Christ — 
in all the fullness of His grace who is present. The — 


ordinance then is not merely commemoration of an 
absent Saviour and Lord, it is communion with One 
who is present. But just as the communion of two 


loving human hearts is dependent on and sustained — 


by the common life of the past days, so surely into 
the communion with Christ enters the remembrance 


of all He suffered and achieved for our salvation. Ags q 


we remember all our salvation cost, as well as all our 
salvation won, we realise the Saviour with us. Just 
as in a human communion which has any worth, each 
loving heart communicates to the others whatever it 
has to give, so assuredly the present Christ bestows 
gifts on the believer as there is faith to receive. 
Hence the ordinance is more than symbolical; for 
as the faith which in commemoration and communion 
receives the communications of the present Christ, it 
is surely a channel of grace. To the writer it seems 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 399 


that the stress should be laid, not on the elements, but 
on the acts; for the elements are material, and as such 
have no spiritual quality, but the acts are personal, 
and so can express a spiritual content. It is the 
giving and the receiving which express divine grace 
and human faith, and as symbols may accompany 
what they signify. Christ may be giving Himself, and 
may be received by the believer, as the bread is broken 
and the cup passed. What response can faith make 
to such grace besides receiving it? Surely consecra- 
lion is what the believer brings as his thank-offering 
for the atoning sacrifice. It is a pity that the term 
Eucharist is so often associated with the sacramen- 
talist view, for what it means is thanksgiving. In 
Scotland the term Sacrament is commonly used of 
the Lord’s Supper; that too expresses dedication, 
the renewal of the vows of devotion and _ service. 
Such an experience in observing the ordinance surely 
yields all the religious and moral good that any 
sacramentalist theory could claim for the special 
grace conveyed in sacraments. 

(d) There is one aspect of the sacraments which 
very often does not get the attention which it deserves. 
The sacraments are social acts, the acts of the Chris- 
tian community through its representatives in their 
administration. The Lord’s Supper is still more dis- 
tinctively social, as it is a common meal in which 
the members of the Church enter into fellowship with 
one another in their communion with the one Saviour 
and Lord of all. Hence it seems a departure from 
the intention that baptism is sometimes administered 
in a private house, or at an after-service. It ought 
to be part of the regular worship, the welcome by the 
whole Christian community into the circle of its moral 
and religious influence, for baptism is an initiation 
into the Christian society. So also the administration 
of the Eucharist by the officiating minister to each 
communicant separately seems much less significant 
than when the elements are passed from hand to hand, 
each receiving and each giving, for it is surely in the 
mutual helpfulness of the members of the Church in 


400 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


the things of the Spirit that the grace of Christ is 
mediated, as well as by His immediate gift to each. 
To be introduced into and to maintain one’s standing 
within the community, which is the body of Christ, 
is a condition of enjoying fully the gifts of the Spirit. 
As God is Father of all, Christ is Saviour of all, and 
the Spirit works and dwells in all; and as the supreme 
law is love, to ignore the social aspect of these sacra- 
ments as marking entrance into and continuance in 
fellowship is to narrow and impoverish the Christian 
experience and character. There is a further con- 
sideration which follows from this. As there is only 
one Church of Jesus Christ, it is a loss incalculable 
that there is not fullest and freest intercommunion 
among the Churches. A grave responsibility is as- 
sumed by those who set up barriers between Christians 
approaching the same Table of the Lord, unless con- 
science inexorably forbids, and the writer cannot 
understand how the Christian conscience can forbid, 
while cherishing respect for the scruples of others. 
One of the worthiest motives of the movement towards 
reunion is just the desire that all Christians should 
be able, without let or hindrance, in love to one 
another to remember the love of the Saviour in dying, 
and to receive more fully the love of the Living Lord. 
Thus best of all could the spiritual unity of the Church 
be made visible to the world. 

(iv) The term discipline, which John Knox used 
to describe the third function of the Church, suggests 
law rather than love, and belongs to a fashion of 
thought in which the Old Testament was held as of 
equal authority with the New, so that the distinctive- 
ness of the Christian Gospel found inadequate re- 
cognition. We should rather use the phrase ‘ the 
cure of souls,’ the interest in and the solicitude for 
the Christian character and experience of the members 
of the Church, which not only the minister should 
show, but which should be mutual among the members. 
This does not mean uncharitable interference, prying 
into and calling attention to the faults of others, a 
grievous defect which has been found in small fellow- 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 401 


ships. But it does mean the desire and the purpose 
that the light shall shine, and that the salt shall not 
lose its savour. A merely official supervision of the 
conduct of members is not adequate; there must be 
heart-interest, and loving effort to help one another 
in fulfillimg the Christian calling. Except in very 
flagrant lapses which even the common conscience 
condemns, formal suspension from membership is 
undesirable and impracticable ; and even with notori- 
ous offenders there should be the patience of love, 
doing all that can be done to restore. For the primary 
consideration is not the reputation of the Church for 
the severity of its standards, as was sometimes thought, 
but the duty of the followers of Christ to follow Him 
in seeking in order to save the lost. What, however, 
is the obligation of each Church is by its testimony and 
its influence to maintain the highest Christian stand- 
ards both of religious experience and of moral char- 
acter. The preacher, if his preaching is not to be 
vain, must embody the truth he teaches in the tale 
of his own life. The pastoral function of the Christian 
ministry is often depreciated in comparison with his 
preaching and administrative activities; but while 
the cure of souls is not entrusted to him alone, he has 
a special responsibility to come into personal contact 
with all committed to his charge, and to make his 
own personality as fully a channel of the gifts of the 
Spirit as he can. Only as the members of the Church 
suffer and rejoice together, does it become the local 
manifestation and activity of the One Church, the 
body of Christ, the community of the Spirit. 

(3) In the New Testament conception of the Church 
as a body, it is assumed that all the members have 
some gift of the Spirit, which enables them to share 
in its ministry, discharging the function which corre- 
sponds with the spiritual endowment. But, as has 
already been mentioned, there was also recognised 
the inspired ministry of the itinerant preachers and 
teachers, and the officers of the local church. 

(i) Although the history is obscure, the local 
ministry in due time took over the function of the 

Ap & 


402 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


itinerant, and one of the elders (presbyters) became 
bishop of the local church (primus inter pares), and 
thus the three orders of bishops, presbyters, and 
deacons came to be. In Ignatius the bishop is the 
bond of unity in the Church; in Irenaeus he is the 
custodian, because of his representative character, 
of the apostolic tradition preserved in his Church, if 
regarded as of apostolic foundation. It is only in 
Cyprian that the sacerdotal ideas of the Old Testa- 
ment and paganism begin to affect the conception of 
the ministry, and the bishop comes to be invested 
with an authority as the local organ of the universal 
Church, which had not been claimed for him as the 
representative of the local Church. Into this develop- 
ment it is not necessary to enter further. Although 
the writer belongs to a non-episcopal Church, and feels 
no need of the bishop, yet for the sake of the reunion 
of the Christian Churches he is quite prepared to 
accept the episcopate, yet not a prelatic, but a con- 
stitutional and representative, such as has developed 
in Anglican communions outside of England. Such 
an episcopate can be combined with all that is essential 
in the other types of polity, the presbyteral and the 
congregational. It would appear that the one func- 
tion which the High Anglican feels compelled to 
reserve for the bishop is that of ordination, although 
a participation of presbyters is accepted; whether 
confirmation should also be so reserved is a question 
on which there seems to be greater difference of | 
opinion. The practice of episcopacy without any 
theory could be accepted by the non-episcopal Churches 
to end the scandal of a divided Christendom. The 
writer feels bound to reject the theory of the * apostolic 
succession ’ in the episcopate, and of the sacerdotal 
character of the ministry. The New Testament knows 
neither of these theories. The unity and continuity 
of the Church does not depend on any succession of 
its officers, but on the continued presence and activity 
of Christ by His Spirit, and there is only one Mediator 
between God and man—the Saviour and the Lord. 
(ii) The constructive doctrine of the ministry may 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 403 


now be stated. (a) A view not uncommon among 
English Nonconformists may at once be dismissed. 
The minister is not just one of the members who is 
paid by the other members to make his preaching, 
organising, and visiting ‘a whole-time job.’ In their 
revolt against Anglicanism, English Nonconformists 
have often denied what is itself true, and rejected 
what is itself right. The Christian people is the 
Spirit-filled body, and each member can have im- 
mediate access to God, and discharge such individual 
services in the fellowship as the Spirit’s gifts enable 
him. ‘There are, however, corporate functions of the 
local Church, the conduct of its worship, the adminis- 
tration of its sacraments, the declaration of its Gospel, 
the confession of its faith, the direction of its common 
activities, which cannot be left to any individual 
member to be discharged as and when he pleases. 
The Church must have a representative, chosen, called, 
equipped, and appointed for the discharge of these 
corporate functions. This the minister is. He has 
no authority apart from the Church; he derives his 
authority in the name and on behalf of the Church, 
from the Church; but his authority is not that of one 
of the members only, but that of the representative 
of all the members, and in respecting him the members 
show their reverence for the fellowship of believers 
of which he is the representative. 

(b) A position so responsible and influential demands 
‘special qualifications. The first of these, which is 
rightly insisted on in many communions as primary, 
is that the man has the consciousness of the call of 
God to dedicate himself to this service. The call 
may come in a personal crisis, in which necessity is 
laid upon him: ‘ Woe is unto me if I preach not the 
Gospel’ (1 Cor. 1x. 16). Or the conviction may 
eradually be deepened that this is the will of God for 
him. But however the call may come, no man 
should take this office unto himself. It is not a 
profession a man may accept or refuse; it is a voca- 
tion which he can only obey. A man is not, however, 
the best judge of his own fitness; and accordingly 


404 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


it is necessary that the inward call be confirmed by 
the approval of those competent to judge. The 
minister and members of the church to which a 
candidate for the ministry belongs should kindly, 
and yet wisely and justly, test his fitness before 
recommending him to go on to get the further neces- 
sary educational equipment. Experience has con- 
clusively proved that natural gifts, without rigorous 
training, are not enough ; accordingly, most denomina- 
tions insist on a theological course, although the re- 
quirements vary almost incredibly. This is not the 
place to sketch an ideal course; but what must be 
insisted on is, that in the long run the more thorough 
the training the more efficient the service afterwards 
is likely to be. It must be practical as well as theo- 
retical, so that the minister can use most effectively 
in preaching, or any other function, the knowledge 
which he has gathered. It is the responsibility, again, 
of the authorities of the theological college, not only 
on entrance, but also throughout the course, to be 
constantly testing fitness, and to turn aside from the 
ministry any man manifestly unfit. If a man thus 
shows himself unfit, we may conclude that he was 
mistaken in thinking himself called, and his unfitness 
warrants the assumption that he was likely to be 
mistaken. If he prove his fitness, that itself justifies 
the confidence of himself and others that he has 
indeed been called. Should a man stand the test of — 
the theological course, his acceptableness must be | 
tested by those to whom he seeks to minister. Im- 
perfect as is the method of choosing a minister in 
many churches, and inadequate as the grounds often 
are on which the choice is made, yet there seems to 
be no other way of giving effect to the principle that 
it is not apart from the church, but through it, that 
any man can become its minister. Cana man imposed 
on a church fulfil this vocation as acceptably as he 
whom a church has itself chosen? If the Church be 
the body of Christ, and as such Spirit-filled, what 
organ more fitted for the discharge of this responsi- 
bility can be conceived ? In this call of the Church ~ 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 405 


the inward call finds its final confirmation. May it 
not then be said that God gives to the church the 
minister chosen by it ? 

(c) As the local congregation is but a local mani- 
festation and activity of the one Church, although 
that one Church is divided into denominations, the 
ministry thus begun is wider than that of a local 
congregation. The man is called to be a minister 
of Jesus Christ for His universal Church; and ordina- 
tion is the method by which since the Apostolic times 
a man is set apart to this ministry. To him who 
receives this ordinance worthily in aspiration, con- 
secration, and dependence, the symbol of the Spirit’s 
endowment will also become the channel; and he will 
receive a gift to fit him more fully for his calling. As 
ecclesiastical barriers to the exercise of this universal 
ministry still exist, the local congregation will seek 
to be associated with the other churches of its order 
at least in this ordinance. A man may be inducted 
to the pastorate of a church in a denomination, but 
his ordination means, and cannot but mean, that he 
becomes a minister of Jesus Christ in His Church. 
The insistence in episcopal churches on ordination 
by a bishop now hinders the recognition of the fact 
that ordination is not to a congregation or a de- 
nomination, but to the universal Church. How this 
difficulty will be removed does not yet appear, but a 
step towards it has been taken by the recognition by 
representative Anglicans that the Free Churches of 
Kingland have a ministry of the Word and the Sacra- 
ments within the one universal Church of Christ. 
The practical consequences of such a position have 
yet to be drawn. | 

(d) Experience can be here set against theory. 
Ministers in non-episcopal churches have at their 
ordination been conscious of the presence of the Head 
of the Church laying His invisible hands upon them, 
breathing upon them His Spirit. That ineffable 
experience they dare not doubt nor deny, and with 
all the faults and failures which they contritely confess 
their subsequent ministry has in some measure at 


406 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


least fulfilled the promise of that solemn and sacred 
hour: it has not been altogether without the fruit of 
the Spirit. To them their ordination has proved a 
valid sacrament; and they cannot conceive the 
possibility of being re-ordained in order that some- 
thing might be added of authority to their ministry 
that 1t does not by the gift of Christ already possess. 
The life and work of the minister after his ordination 
is a continued test, and, if the test be met, a repeated 
confirmation of the call of God. The insufficiency 
of his fulfilment of his calling he may need to confess 
constantly, but of the reality of his vocation his 
experience in his ordination may reassure him in times 
of disappointment and despondency. This view of 
ordination assumes no mysterious value in the ordin- 
ance itself, only that for divine grace and human 
faith the symbolic act may be the occasion of a real 
imparting and a real receiving of the gifts of the 
Spirit. Having been begun in the Spirit, the ministry 
must be continued in the Spirit ; and it is only by a 
ministry dowered with the enthusiasm and energy 
of Pentecost that the Church can, amid all that tends 
to lessen its vitality and vigour in the world, prove 
itself the body of Christ, the visible organ of His 
presence and activity, by becoming to the world the 
channel of the enlightening, quickening, and renewing 
Spirit of God. Thus the Church, the Ministry, the 
Gospel may be to the world sacramental, conveying 
the life of God to men.} 

(4) The definitions of the Church in the Protestant 
Confession omit one of its functions which to-day is 
regarded as of primary importance. 

(1) The conception of the Kingdom of God had 
fallen into the background. It was Roman Catholi- 
cism which after the Reformation carried on foreign 
mission work: for the most part Protestantism 
ignored and neglected the Great Commission to 
‘make disciples of all the nations’ (Matt. xxviii. 


* These questions about church, sacraments, ministry, and ordination have 
been discussed in a volume of essays, Towards Reunion, by Church of England 
and Free Church writers. 


SS - 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 407 


19). It was only at the beginning of last century 
that the foreign missionary campaigns captured the 
allegiance of the Churches generally. The parable 
of the growth of the kingdom from the small seed 
to the great plant only then again came into the 
living thought of Christian men (Matt. xiii, 31-32). 
Still less was the lesson of the parable of the leaven 
(v. 33) appreciated. Lutheranism taught that a man 
may attain Christian perfection by faith in God and 
the fulfilment of his earthly calling, and denied that 
the monastic life was the distinctively ‘ religious ’ 
life. But from the beginning it has been too prone 
to acquiesce in the things that are as ‘ ordained of 
God’; and has failed to be a motive to social reform. 
Calvin did recognise the duty of the Church to re- 
mould human society to the pattern of the will of 
God, but unfortunately he interpreted that will in 
commands of law and not a purpose of love. While 
during last century the missionary obligation was 
more generally recognised, the social obligation of 
the Church was to a large extent overlooked. In- 
dividualism dominated thought and life in the Church 
as well as in the world around. With the exception 
of a few pioneer thinkers, most Christian teachers 
took for granted that all the Church owed to society 
around was by the cultivation of individual character 
to fit men to take a worthy Christian part in the world’s 
affairs. That it had a corporate function by its testi- 
mony and influence towards society to transform its 
standards, customs, and institutions in accordance 
with the mind of Christ was a conviction which only 
very gradually won its way. The Conference on 
Christian Politics, Economics, and Citizenship, held 
in April 1924 in Birmingham, marks a stage in the 
Church’s progress. 

(11) In the saying about the Church in Matthew xvi. 
18, Peter is entrusted with the ‘ keys of the kingdom 
of heaven.’ This phrase is generally regarded as a 
symbol for stewardship. The concerns of the Kingdom 
are to be the charge of the Church. We need not 
now discuss the attempt to impose an exclusively 


408 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


eschatological sense on the term the Kingdom of God 
or heaven. Whether the word Baoweta means rule 
or realm makes little difference to the sense of the 
phrase. The Kingdom of God is God’s sovereignty 
in human society, in all realms of human interest or 
activity. How can it be distinguished from the 
Chureh, and what is the relation of the Church to it ? 
The Church is the community of the Spirit, the body 
of Christ ; it is distinctively the religious society, it is 
concerned with man’s conscious and voluntary rela- 
tion to God in Christ. The Kingdom, on the other 
hand, brings all human relations under the authority 
and direction of the purpose of God. Morality, in- 
dustry, art, science, culture, and civilisation are all 
concerns of the Kingdom. The mission of the Church 
is first of all to bring all men into this personal relation 
to God, and then to make this personal relation 
dominant in all other relations. The Church wins 
men to God, and then through them seeks to win all 
human life for God. Ritschl’s conception is some- 
what narrower. As worshipping, the Christian com- 
munity is the Church; as fulfilling the law of love, 
and thus changing human society, it is the Kingdom.! 
There are men outside of the Church who are furthering 
the interests of the Kingdom, and there are members 
of the Church who fall very far short in meeting the 
demands of the Kingdom. When all men are drawn 
into personal relation to Ged in Christ, a hope we must 
cherish, Church and Kingdom will be co-extensive ; 
all in the Kingdom will be in the Church also. When 
all who are in the Church are realising the ideal of 
the Kingdom, will the Church and the Kingdom be 
identical ? Even then the two conceptions will re- 
main distinguishable as the distinctively religious and 
the universally human aspect of God’s relation to 
man. We must not regard the Church as only a 
means towards the Kingdom as an end, because the 
personal relation to God is an essential element in 
the human good which the term Kingdom of God 
describes ; it is a part and a necessary part of the end, 
* Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, p. 7. 


THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 409 


and yet it is also a means by which the whole end must 
be reached. 'To emphasise the priority of the personal 
relation to God is at all times necessary, but not less 
necessary is it to insist that this personal relation is 
itself incomplete until it dominates the whole of life. 
This is the Church’s double task, to win disciples, and 
through them to hasten the Kingdom of God. 


CHAPTER III 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 


(1) So individualistic has Protestant Christianity 
become that it may seem strange that the subject 
of Christian Life is being treated after, and not before 
that of the Christian Church ; and yet that is not only 
the historical, but also the theological order. A 
number of isolated individuals do not come together 
to form the society ; the society gathers individuals 
into its fellowship. » The Church is based not on any 
human intentions in time, but on the eternal purpose 
of God. Related as it is to human history, it is 
not a product of any human development; it was 
established on earth by Jesus the Christ our Lord in 
fulfilment of the purpose of God; it is sustained not 
merely by human volitions, but by the presence and 
power of the Head, who by His Spirit is the bond of 
unity. For Christ alone was the relation of Son to 
God as Father unmediated by heredity or environ- 
ment; His alone was an immediate communion with 
God; for all Christians the relation to God is mediated 
by His grace. Even the first disciples discovered and 
confessed His Messiahship in companionship with 
Him and with one another. Since His Ascension His 
invisible Presence and intangible Power is mediated 
by the Christian society. It is His body, and His 
Spirit is its common possession. Accordingly, the 
Christian life must be thought of as dependent on 
and realised within the Christian society. The truth 
and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ come to the in- 
dividual through the Christian Church, and it is in 
its membership that he can more fully experience 
and express that truth and grace. It is not to an 
isolated relation to Himself that Christ calls in His 
410 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 411 


Gospel, and draws by His Spirit, but to a relation 
which can be received and realised only in fellowship 
within the Christian society. As the fullness of the 
Godhead dwells in Him bodily (Col. ii. 9), not only 
in. His personal incarnation, but even now in His 
continued incarnation in the Church, the habitation 
of the Spirit, it is as a member of that body that the 
believer receives of that fullness, and grace for grace. 
If in the believer’s consciousness the body be confined 
to the congregation to which he belongs, or even to 
the denomination to which he adheres, how much is 
his life impoverished, because he does not discern 
the whole body (1 Cor. x1. 29), the unity of all believers, 
the communion of all the saints in the one Spirit! It 
is from the one Church the individual receives the 
oifts of Christ; it is in the one Church he makes full 
use of these gifts. 

(2) The relation of the Christian life to the Christian 
Church as mediated by it and realised in it having 
thus been defined, its characteristics may now be 
described. 

(1) While in the pearl of great price (Matt. xi. 45- 
46) the worth of all the goodly pearls is not only 
recovered but enhanced, or, to speak without meta- 
phor, while in the relation to Christ all human needs 
can be met, all human interests preserved, and all 
human aspirations fulfilled, while the human ideals 
of truth, beauty, holiness, and love can in the Christian 
life be realised (Phil. iv. 8), yet Christianity is not to 
be thought of as first of all and most of all perfective 
of all that is good in man: it is that, all that, but it 
is more, for it meets the human extremity as a religion 
which could only perfect the good could not; it is 
redemptive, reconciling, restorative. Jesus did not 
so to the respectable morally and religiously—the 
scribes and Pharisees—-who deeming themselves right- 
eous did not own their need of salvation; but He 
became the companion of the sinners and the outcasts 
of Jewish society, for not only great was their need, 
but they might be more readily brought to a sense of 
their need (Mark ii. 16, 17). Whether in a sinless 


412 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


world there would have been an Incarnation or not 
is a speculative inquiry, which the writer himself 
would answer affirmatively. But the Incarnation as 
it was, was in all its activities and results redemptive; 
it was God’s dealing with sin that He might put an 
end to sin. He who has no sense of sin, and feels no 
need of forgiveness, offers no points of contact for the 
truth and grace of Christ. He compels Christ to leave 
him alone, as He did the ‘ righteous’ of His own 
earthly ministry. 

(ii) Hence the first characteristic of Christian ex- 
perience is penitence, not only a feeling of regret at 
the sin committed, but also a judgment of its un- 
mitigated moral evil, and a resolve to be done with it : 
a man must put away in aversion the evil of which he 
is ashamed, and for which he grieves. The emotional 
intensity of this experience is no measure of its moral 
reality, for that depends on temperament; what 
alone determines the value is the degree in which the 
sin is denied and renounced. The theology of a 
former age demanded ‘law-work’ before ‘ Gospel- 
work ’; it required the sinner to discover at Sinai the 
sin of which Calvary offered the forgiveness. But 
this was a legal and not an evangelical standpoint. 
Calvary is God’s clearest exposure and severest con- 
demnation of sin; for resistance of love is far more 
heinous than defiance of law. Sin as disobedience 
of law is not the distinctively Christian judgment of 
it; it is sin as distrust of love which is in the Christian 
view the greater wrong to God. It is not the trans- 
gression of commandments which will concern the 
Christian penitent most of all; it is the withholding 
from God of filial confidence and submission, for 
estrangement of heart is the inner motive of perver- 
sion of will. It is the Saviour in His teaching and 
example, His grace towards sinners, His sacrifice on 
the Cross, who makes the conscience sensitive to the 
sin in the inward parts, and brings about a penitence 
which is the ending of the old life and the beginning 
of the new. 

(111) This experience will not be exactly the same 


4 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 413 


for the man who turns from a life of sin and unbelief 
to God in a conscious conversion, and the child or the 
youth who from earliest years has received and re- 
sponded to Christian influences. Yet even he whose 
life has been in the judgment of men blameless must 
have a sense of shortcoming, of failure always to 
be the best which he knows, and wishes himself to be. 
Some who have been Christian from their earliest 
years do pass through a crisis, in which they realise 
acutely how far short they have fallen, and resolve 
more strenuously and persistently to fulfil their Chris- 
tian calling. This penitence is not a solitary act in 
the Christian life; it is rather a constant process. 
All unreality is abhorrent in the Christian life, and a 
man must not charge himself with positive trans- 
eressions of which he is not guilty, and of which it 
may be he is morally incapable. By the grace of 
Christ a man may be enabled to live a life without 
moral reproach; and yet if he scrutinises himself 
in the searching light of the moral glory of Jesus 
Christ he will ever have a sense of imperfection. 
Even if the good purpose is dominant in his acts, 
and these acts spring from a pure motive—love to 
God and love to man—he must ever feel that he has 
not yet apprehended all for which he was apprehended 
by Christ (Phil. ii. 12). Without any morbidness 
the saint will still confess himself a sinner repenting 
of his sin, and seeking for forgiveness. The dis- 
tinctively Christian life is thus always far removed 
from self-conceit, self-righteousness, and self-satisfac- 
tion; for the perfection of God, disclosed in Jesus 
Christ, will ever be exposing its imperfection. 

(3) What distinguishes repentance from remorse 
is that repentance is not merely sin’s consequence, 
but God’s gift. There is a sorrow for sin, which 
follows on sin which is unto death, and not life (2 Cor. 
vii. 9-10). In the sorrow that is unto life there is, 
and must be, the beginnings of faith, the assurance that 
forgiveness and deliverance are available. It is faith 
that changes a hopeless grief into a hopeful sorrow for 
sin. When Judas discovered that he had betrayed 


414 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


the innocent blood he ‘ repented himself,’ but his was 
not the godly repentance, for when his fellow-sinners 
scorned his appeal he went and hanged himself 
(Matt. xxvii. 3-10). When Jesus looked upon Peter 
(Luke xxii. 61, 62), he went out and wept bitterly, 
because that look of Jesus brought reproach; but 
his grief was not unto death, for that same look 
assured forgiveness. Woe to the man who discovers 
himself without discovering the Saviour. It is only 
in the Saviour’s presence that self-discovery will lead 
to self-recovery. Hence faith is the root of the 
Christian life, for even penitence for sin must spring 
out of that root. 


(i) The function of faith is not confined to the re-— 


ception of the divine grace in the forgiveness of sin, 
and deliverance from its bondage, although that is 
primary in the Christian experience, for man as 
creature, subject, and child of God is dependent upon 
God; in no respect in his higher life is there any 
sufficiency in himself, he is always finding his suffi- 
ciency in God alone (2 Cor. iii. 5). Faith is not merely 
in contrast to sense a realisation of God whom no 
sense can perceive (Heb. xi. 1), it is a determination of 
the whole of life by the reality of God. It is the 
exercise of the whole personality in relation to God ; 
it is the belief of the mind, the trust of the heart, the 
submission of the will. It is a receptivity, not a 


passive but an active; the whole self must go out to. 


and lay hold on God and His gifts. For God’s com- 
municative perfection is not a suppression of man’s 
imperfect capacities, but a liberation, stimulation, 
exaltation. A man is most himself, his truest and 
best self, as in faith he commits himself to God, and 
accepts all that God in grace through Jesus Christ 
offers. Such faith is not a temporary but a constant 
activity, for on the one hand man’s necessity to 
receive from God is never removed, and on the other 
hand God’s capacity to bestow is never exhausted. 
As faith receives grace it is the more developed to 
receive the still more abounding grace; the depths 
of that grace faith never fathoms. The penitence 


a a Oe a 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ALS 


which turns from sin, and the faith which lays hold 
on God, are the two aspects of conversion, the conscious 
voluntary turning of man from sin to God; it is 
dying to sin, and becoming alive to God. 

(ii) Faith is the activity distinctive of religion, and 
faith as directed towards God in Christ as Saviour 
and Lord of the Christian religion. This is what 
distinguishes religion from morality, unless the moral- 
ity feels its need of, and so is led to religion. ‘ The 
categorical imperative ’ postulates man’s liberty, that 
he can do what he ought to do. If a man’s ideal is 
lofty and wide enough, he will probably soon discover 
his own limitations in realising it. But we must 
admit that there are men who in their own estimate 
of themselves do live in accordance with their own 
standards, and so have a mind conscious of its own 
uprightness. Morality without religion tends to self- 
sufficiency and self-satisfaction. But because religion, 
and pre-eminently the Christian religion, on the one 
hand presents the divine perfection as the ideal to 
be realised (Matt. v. 48; Eph. v. 1), and on the other 
offers men conscious of how far short they fall the 
assurance of forgiveness and deliverance, it forbids 
such self-sufficiency and self-satisfaction. A pagan 
moralist might think of a good man as pleased with 
himself, as conscious of his own superiority. But the 
Christian thinker must insist on the grace of humility 
as the adornment of Christian goodness. Humility 
is a distinctively Christian grace, and inseparably 
accompanies Christian faith. It is not a feeling of 
worthlessness ; it is not abject nor servile; the man 
marked by humility does not despise himself or despair 
of himself. It is his recognition of his own worth to 
God as by God’s grace a forgiven child of God, that 
makes him ever conscious of his unworthiness, as 
falling short of his calling. God’s condescension in 
setting so high a value on man as His child is the 
source of the humility of the child aware of ever prov- 
ing himself as less than that value to God. Because 
all that he is, or hopes to be, is of grace through faith, 
the Christian man cannot be high-minded, conceited, 


416 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


proud, or vain; in lowliness of mind he will prefer 
others to himself and think more generously of their 
attainments than of his own (Rom. xii. 8, 10, 16). 
If salvation were of works done by man, he might 
have somewhat whereof to boast; but since salvation 
is God’s free gift, all boasting is excluded (iii. 27). 
Pharisaism in any and every form is opposed to the 
Christian attitude; it is so deadly because it is the 
disease which most easily assails those who seek to 
be good and godly. Inward health of soul can only 
be preserved by the humility which glories only in 
the gifts of God’s grace. 

(111) As faith is the characteristic activity of religion 
with humility as its necessary accompaniment, prayer 
may be said to be its necessary expression. In the 
personal relation between God and man there must 
be communion ; love that never spoke or heard would 
soon languish. That communion will include study 
of and meditation on the Holy Scriptures; it will 
include the inward vision and the ineffable adoration 
of God as present, as revealed in Jesus Christ ; it will 
include a glad and quick submission to all the workings 
of the Spirit of God within the soul; it will find its 
spontaneous expression in prayer. Prayer must not 
be thought of primarily as petition, as asking God to 
give what we want. It must begin in gratitude for 
all God is, and does; it must end in submission to 
the will of God as alone good.! If we fully realised 
God’s goodness, and that in His will alone is our good, 
we should be less eager to utter our own wishes and 
be content to leave all to His good will. Nevertheless, 
the childike communion with God would lack freedom 
if we could not bring to God, that we may trustfully 
and obediently leave with Him, what our hearts most 
desire. An anxious scrutiny of every petition as 
to whether we should or should not present it would 
make prayer a burden and a yoke, and not a relief and 
a refuge. We must not say that prayer should be 
confined to spiritual blessings only, for our spiritual 
life is affected by our cares and desires regarding 

* See Matt. xi. 25-27, xxvi. 39-44, for Christ’s attitude in prayer. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 417 


earthly goods, regarding the health and happiness of 
our loved ones, and God is in His providence caring 
for all His creatures in nature as well as history.! 
But all petitions must always be offered not merely in 
passive resignation, but in active co-operation with 
God’s will. Then prayer itself becomes a fan winnow- 
ing the chaff from the wheat of our desires, and in 
prayer we learn what to pray for, and to give up the 
wishes which we cannot offer to God in prayer. While 
childlike prayer must not be childish, just as an 
earthly parent trains the child not to be childish, 
God is in the communion of His children with Him 
training them for spiritual maturity, when their 
petitions will be assured of an answer, because by 
the enlightening of His Spirit more and more con- 
formed to His holy and blessed will (John xv. 7). 

(4) The second of the Christian graces is love. 

(1) Ritschl has maintained that the relation to God 
and Christ is contained in faith, and that we must 
not speak of love.2 There is a sentimentality: in 
human affection which has no place in love for God. 
To use the language of the Song of Songs regarding 
Christ Himself is offensive to a reverent spirit. Paul 
never uses terms of endearment in regard to Christ, 
intimate as was his communion. But we can surely 
regard God as our highest good, we can share God’s 
sorrow for man’s sin and God’s joy in man’s recovery, 
we can live and labour for the coming of God’s King- 
dom and the doing of His will, we can give our life to 
God and find our life in God—that is love at its truest 
and best. We can adore and delight in God. As 
God has come so near to our humanity in Jesus Christ, 
God in Christ can be the object of an intense personal 
affection and devotion. Faith united Paul so closely 
to Christ, that for him to live was Christ (Phil. 1. 21) ; 
he experienced his renunciation of sin as crucifixion 
with Christ, and his sanctification to God as resurrec- 
tion with Christ (Rom. vi. 1-11; Gal. 1. 20). If 
this is not the usual Christian experience, it is not, 

1 Of. Matt. vi. 25-34. 
2 See Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 598-5. 
2D 


418 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


however, to be regarded as abnormal, but rather as 
typical of what that experience may at its highest and 
fullest be. This love of God in Christ is blended of 
many elements—gratitude for grace, the forgiveness 
of and deliverance from sin, adoration of the perfec- 
tion of God, dedication to the service of God, and 
satisfaction in communion with God. A Christian 
life is incomplete, however worthy may be the charac- 
ter, which does not include this experience of personal 
relation to God in Christ. As love is communicative 
as well as receptive, God’s love, to which man’s love 
so responds, will be shed abroad in the human heart ; 
man will become a partaker in the life which is dis- 
tinctive of God.! The love of God thus received in 
love by man becomes the motive and the purpose 
of the Christian life even in relation tomen. The love 
of Christ (not ours for Christ, but Christ’s for us) 
constraineth us, becomes as it were the channel in 
which the currents of human aspiration and en- 
deavour are confined (2 Cor. v. 14). Jesus joined 
together love for God and love for man (Mark xii. 29- 
31). For Paul love was a more excellent way than 
the exercise of spiritual gifts (1 Cor. xi. 31). In the 
Epistles of John the test and proof of love to God is 
love to man. Hence the same principle is distinctive 
of Christian character as of Christian experience. 

(ii) The definition of love already given may be 
recalled ; it is a judgment of value, a sentiment of 
interest, and a purpose of good. If we love God, we 
seek and strive to value men as God does, to be inter- 
ested in men (sharing their grief or joy) as He is, to 
work for their good according to His purpose. From 
the reality of God’s love may be deduced the ideal 
for man’s. First of all, God’s love is a universal love; 
the differences of sex, class, culture, nation, race, 
colour which divide men from one another do not 
affect His love for all (Matt. v. 45; ef. Gal. ii. 28). 
Kven character does not determine His general bene- 
ficence: His sun shines and His showers fall for 
good and bad alike; although it must be added He 

1 See 1 John iv. 7-21. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 419 


is not indifferent to the moral differences, for sinners 
are a sorrow to Him, and in saints is His delight. 
While Christianity does not abolish these differences, 
it transcends them in love’s claim and call. Christian 
love overleaps all the artificial barriers which human 
society may setup. Class conflicts, national enmities, 
racial prejudices it condemns. This characteristic of 
Christian morality has so far been only partially 
realised, as the divisions among men still persist, 
causing strife and war. How the ideal of Christian 
universalism may be realised it is the province of 
Christian ethics to explore and expound, but lies 
beyond the bounds of the purpose of this volume. 
Secondly, God’s love is a redemptive love. God 
forgives sins, and saves from sin. Accordingly, no 
moral demand is so insistently and persistently made 
by Jesus in the Gospels as forgiveness (Matt. v. 38-48, 
vi. 14-15, xvii. 21-35; Luke xxii. 84). As the divine 
forgiveness does not wait for man’s penitence to make 
its approach and appeal, but by its generosity evokes 
penitence, so the Christian duty is not merely to 
forgive after penitence, but to offer forgiveness, if 
need be even with earnest entreaty, to the impenitent 
that they may be moved to contrition. Here again 
the Christian ideal is far from realisation. Where 
equal authority is given to the Old Testament as to 
the New, where the distinctiveness of the revelation of 
God in Christ is not appreciated, the attitude of even 
good men towards sinners is that of law and not of 
love. Forgiveness does not necessarily involve the 
annulment of all the consequences of wrong-doing ; 
it may be even for the transgressor’s good that he 
should suffer; but it does mean willingness to restore 
the interrupted personal relationship, the fellowship 
of love, as soon as that is desired and accepted. If 
a man shows in his own character the grace of for- 
giveness, he will in like measure in his own experience 
enjoy the gift of God’s forgiveness; for the unfor- 
giving cannot be forgiven, he cannot receive from 
God what he refuses to men. Nothing would so 
exhibit to the world the reality of God’s forgiveness 


420 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


as the whole Christian society distinguished by the 
practice of this obligation. For nothing is so severe 
a test and so sure a proof of love as is forgiveness. 
* Thirdly, God’s love is sacrificial ; forgiveness costs. 
What has been said about the Cross of Christ should 
here be recalled. The morally indifferent may find 
it easy to pass over a transgression, but that is not 
forgiveness. There is forgiveness only as the wrong 
done is morally judged as what it is, as there is in- 
dignation against it, aversion to it, condemnation of 
it. Love may need to go far beyond all ordinary 
social obligations to make the effective approach and 
appeal to the impenitent. Love may need to endure 
the contradiction of -sinners (Heb. xii. 3), to make 
itself of no reputation, to be despised and rejected 
that it may move the sinner to contrition (Is. liii.). 
The call to sacrifice—great as in such a case it is— 
is not confined to the exercise of forgiveness. Life’s 
pains and perils are such that love is called to suffer 
in many ways. While the self realises itself in self- 
sacrifice, as in no other way, the cross being the way 
to the crown, yet the sacrifice may be not of earthly 
goods only. Mental, moral, and spiritual good may 
need to be surrendered. A man may need to limit 
his pursuit of culture that he may render service to 
others. The cultivation of personal character may 
have to be subordinated to social obligations. Even 
communion with God may be less frequent because 
the need of man is so insistent. Even Jesus in the 
agony of Gethsemane accepted the desolation of the 
Cross—the loss of His joy in God’s Fatherhood—as 
the completion of His sacrifice. On the other hand, 
no man can give the world a better gift than his best 
self, and so the sacrifice must be so measured that the 
service will be the fullest the man can render. No 
selfish interest may set bounds to the sacrifice, but 
the obligation to become what God means must be 
the guiding principle as to the good for self which is to 
be surrendered to secure the good of others. a 
(iii) While these are the distinctive features of 
Christian love, God’s love reproduced in man’s, love 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 421 


is the motive of the moral life, but it is not the whole 
content. That must be defined in relation to the 
actual conditions and relations of life. Distinctive 
as the teaching of Jesus was, He entered into a moral 
inheritance, for the Old Testament is the record of a 
moral progress. And the Christian Church when it 
went out into the Gentile world found not only moral 
practice, but even moral theory, for Socrates is the 
founder of the science of ethics, reflection on what 
morality means and demands. So complex is the 
life of man, that it would be impossible to give an 
exhaustive account of virtue or vice, right or wrong, 
bad or good. Plato, the great thinker, summed up 
the moral life as a basis of social order, in four virtues, 
wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Christian 
ethics adopted these as the cardinal virtues and con- 
joined them with the three graces, the theological 
virtues, faith; hope, and love. We should not, how- 
ever, place them alongside of the three graces, but 
rather regard them as exercises of love. 

(a) It is hard to do one’s duty; it 1s often as hard, if 
not harder, to know what is duty. Hence the need 
of moral insight or wisdom. No complete code of 
duties can ever be devised, and it is not desirable 
that there should be : for the exercise of the individual 
conscience, with counsel and guidance when necessary, 
is itself an element in the good life. Less developed 
morally would be the personality, the actions of which 
were all prescribed by rules imposed by others. The 
Roman Catholic confessional has this disadvantage, 
that it hinders moral maturity through the dependence 
on another’s judgment which it imposes. Wisdom is 
the quality of the conscience which can distinguish 
right and wrong, good and bad, which even when there 
is no guiding rule can discover what in any given 
situation the moral obligation is. There is a large 
body of moral experience, by which the wise in an 
emergency will usually be guided; but he shows his 
wisdom by detecting at once a situation for which there 
is no assured guidance, and by examining all the 
conditions, so that the proper moral principle may 


422 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


be properly applied. If indeed ‘ more harm is wrought 
by want of thought than even want of heart,’ it is 
evident that wisdom must take a first place among the 
virtues. Christian wisdom is love’s insight, and love 
is not blind, but sees more clearly than the loveless can. 

(b) The greatest hindrance to love of others is not 
love of self, which is ‘ self-knowledge, self-reverence, 
self-control,’ the recognition of one’s own worth for 
God with the desire to prove worthy, but selfishness, 
and selfishness may be directed towards either the 
pleasures or the pains of life; it may be either self- 
seeking or self-sparing. A man may make it his aim 
to get as much of his own happiness out of life, or to 
shun as far as he can any sorrow or peril which may 
beset his path. He may be the slave of his wishes 
or of his fears, and not master of himself so as to 
suppress any desire which should not be gratified, 
or to endure any evil which may come upon him. 
Temperance is self-control in respect of the pleasures, 
and courage of the pains or perils of life. It is a 
misfortune that both words have in common speech 
been so narrowed in their use. Temperance is not 
merely abstinence from the use of intoxicating drinks, 
nor even moderation in the satisfaction of physical 
desires. It includes self-mastery in the inner as well 
as the outer life, control of temper and mood as well 
as appetite. It is moral proportion, the harmony of 
all personal interests and activities. For the Christian 
it has a very much wider range than it had for the 
Greek gentleman, who might indulge without reproach 
in forms of sexual vice which it would be a shame even 
to name. The lustful look is no less condemned than 
the unchaste deed ; the angry word than the vengeful 
blow (Matt. v. 27-82). Thus temperance must be 
shown not merely that the personality may be properly 
developed, but still more that the self under complete 
command may be fit for any service of others which 
love may require, for he who indulges himself will not 
be so able to succour and sustain others; while the 
man temperate in all things (1 Cor. ix. 25) has a moral 
strength which can be a stay to others in their struggles. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 423 


Courage is not only the readiness to face physical 
dangers—as such it is often more a natural endow- 
ment than a moral achievement: it is moral constancy 
and endurance ; to do right despite the world’s frown ; 
to refuse to sin even if companions scorn; to stand 
alone, if need be, for a moral principle against the 
world ; to shrink only from sin, and to stand in awe 
only of God—that is what Christian courage involves. 
As Christian it cannot be self-regarding ; it must be 
concerned about others. One brave man can rally 
the waverers in the crusade against evil; he can be 
a strength to weakness. Not alone on the battle- 
field, or amid the perils of the mine or the sea, is there 
the call for heroism ; for Christian life in a sinful world 
is a constant adventure and campaign. 

(c) It is in the virtue of justice that the relation 
of the individual to society is realised as 1t ought to 
be. To love one’s neighbour as oneself, to do unto 
others as one wishes to be done unto (Matt. vii. 12)— 
this is the Christian rule of justice. It does not mean 
quantitative equality, for another man’s good is not 
necessarily identical with one’s own. A wife's good 
is not the same as a husband’s, or a child’s as a parent’s, 
or a scholar’s as a teacher’s. Accordingly, the Golden 
Rule does not prescribe as a duty conduct to others 
exactly the same as the conduct which one desires 
for oneself. It is not a teacher’s duty to desire to be 
taught by his scholars, or a parent’s to render the 
obedience to his child which he requires of him. 
Here the analogy of the body is helpful: not all the 
members have the same functions, and obligation 
must depend on function. What justice does require 
is that a man shall fill his own and not another’s 
place, and carry his own burden while he also as far 
as he can bears the burdens of others who have need 
of such support. In many cases justice will involve 
mercy. There are those who must make far greater 
demands on others than any return which they can 
make. It is not the mistake, but the glory of man 
not to let ‘ the weakest go to the wall,’ ° perish in the 
struggle for existence.’ The Christian love demands, 


424 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


even more than the Golden Rule requires, that a man 
shall require from others only as much service as he 
must, and render to others as much service as he can. 
Kquality here has no meaning as a measure of what 
justice transformed by love requires. ‘The Son of 
man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, 
and to give His life a ransom for many’ (Matt. xx. 28). 
Sacrifice is the fulfilment of love’s demand. But 
sacrifice involves alike temperance, the control of all 
desires, and courage, the acceptance of all perils and 
pains, and wisdom to discern whether to render or to 
withhold service of this kind is more for the good of 
another. It would be possible to deal with other 
virtues in the same way, as Plato’s enumeration is not 
exhaustive; but these illustrations will serve to show 
how morality is transformed when the love for man, 
which has God’s love as its motive and its pattern, 
becomes the regulative principle. There is a new 
moral creation, the old things pass away and all things 
become new (2 Cor. v. 17). 

(iv) The discussion of virtues may be described as 
the psychological approach to morality; what has 
come into greater prominence in recent years is the 
sociological. Man realises himself as a personality 
in society; social institutions are the permanent 
modes of his moral activity. There is not a uniform 
duty in all human relationships, and even love as the 
regulative principle finds varied expression in different 
relations. These relations are of ever widening scope ; 
within the narrower range are developed the moral 
capacities which will find exercise in the wider. The 
earliest, most enduring, and most influential social 
institution is the family—marriage and parenthood. 
Here love finds its earliest exercise, and learns its 
most enduring lessons. From the family the child 
passes to the school, in which not only intellectual 
capacities may be developed, but moral character 
may also be formed. The theory of education has 
in recent years become most truly Christian, less law 
and more love, less claim of authority for the teacher 
and more right of liberty for the child. When the 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 425 


child as boy or girl, as youth or maiden, passes from 
school into industry (manufacture, commerce, pro- 
fessions), it seems as though he had passed beyond the 
region where the principle of Christian love can find 
application. Nevertheless, it is being recognised more 
than ever before that ruthless competition (regard 
only for self, and disregard of others) even here can 
secure only a temporary success, and leaves behind 
irreparable injury. Accordingly, even practical men 
are beginning to advocate co-operation instead of 
competition, a partnership of Capital and Labour for 
the service of the community. The duties of citizen- 
ship, into which the man or the woman passes beyond 
the earthly calling, are finding fuller recognition; and 
in more advanced social thinking, the organic nature 
of human society is being not only insisted on, but 
a community of interest among all classes is slowly 
winning recognition. The Christian truth that in 
one body the members suffer or rejoice together is 
affecting political theory, if it has not yet adequately 
influenced political practice. Even in citizenship love 
needs to be exercised. The Great War, and still more 
the consequences of the peace, of vengeance and not 
magnanimity, have made men realise that ruin alone 
awaits mankind, unless in international relations the 
spirit of reconciliation gains mastery over all the forces 
which make for war. It is in all relations being 
demonstrated that the application of the principle of 
love alone can avert disaster, and secure the progress 
OliLnesrace, * 

(5) We can distinguish faith and love as the grace 
of dependence and the grace of generosity, the getting 
and the giving of good. It is not so easy to distinguish 
faith and hope, as hope is not so much different from 
faith; it is faith under one aspect, faith as directed 
towards the future, faith receiving and responding 
in confident expectation to the good which the future 
holds. If we will we may say that it is faith in God 


! Christian morality is discussed from this sociological standpoint in the 
Reports (I. to XII.) of the Conference on Christian Politics, Economics, and 
Citizenship, which is commonly spoken of as C.O.P.E.C. 


426 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


which gives hope assurance of that future good. 
Iaith gives substance to things hoped for, for it is 
the evidence of the unseen reality of God (Heb. i. 1). 
Great as is the Christian’s present possession in Jesus 
Christ, greater still is his future inheritance. In the 
next chapter the content of the Christian hope will 
be dealt with. All that here needs to be done is to 
indicate the place of hope inthe Christian life. Both 
in his experience of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and in his character as conforming to that grace, the 
Christian has a sense of his own incompleteness, and 
desires to apprehend that for which he has been 
apprehended by the Lord Jesus. Still more in the 
world around does he find the authority of Christ 
challenged, sin still abounding, and abounding grace 
restrained. His faith would not be so confident and 
his love less satisfying did not hope give the assurance 
that God’s purpose of love in himself and the world 
will find fulfilment. The Christian is thus being saved 
by hope (Rom. vi. 24) from despondency and the 
indifference and indolence that despondency would 
breed, saved unto constancy, endurance, courage, and 
sacrifice. The sneer against ‘ other-worldliness,’ justi- 
fied though it may be by some of the hymns about 
heaven, has no ground to rest on against this attitude. 
It is not a depreciation of all the good that the present 
life holds; it is an appreciation of the greatness of 
man as God has made him and wills him to be, since 
within the bounds of time and sense he cannot realise 
all his possibilities and become all that he will yet be. 
If the ideals of truth, blessedness, holiness, and love 
found only their partial realisation in this life, and 
held no promise of perfect fulfilment, they would mock 
human Aspiration and endeavour. The man will live 
the worthiest life on earth who lives not on the scale 
of threescore years and ten, or a little more, but only 
on the scale of the eternal life, to which death sets no 
bounds. Without hope the Christian life could not 
be lived at its best, for it calls man to a good so great 
that life here is too brief to enter into its full possession. 

(6) Because penitence and faith are the initial 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 427 


activities in the Christian life, it is seen to be a life 
in which human failure and insufficiency are changed 
into victory and achievement by the divine power. 

(i) From beginning to end the Christian life is 
human activity, and not passivity, and yet it is not 
man acting alone, apart from God. Man can work 
out his own salvation only as it is God who worketh 
in him by His Spirit (Phil. 1. 12-13). Having looked 
at the characteristics of the Christian life in the human 
activities which are essential to it, we may now turn 
to consider how God works. ‘There are different types 
of Christian experience, the sudden conversion from 
sin to God, the deliberate decision which confirms 
the previous development towards God, the gradual 
development which knows no crisis. But in none of 
these types is man alone active; God’s Spirit is 
energising in all. The term regeneration should not 
be restricted to describe the divine energy in the 
sudden conversion ; the regeneration, the making fully 
and truly spiritual the natural life of man, may be a 
very slow process, but on that acccount not the less 
real. The new birth from above (John 1. 3, 5) may 
seem sudden, or appear slow, but its reality does not 
depend on the mode of our apprehension. There may 
have been long preparation for the sudden conversion, 
what theologians called prevenient grace; within the 
oradual development there may have been unobserved 
moments of the intenser energy of the Spirit. This 
alone needs to be insisted on, that the Christian life 
is no natural product of heredity, environment, and 
individuality, but is and must ever be the work of 
God. If we cannot, then, regard regeneration as a 
solitary act, but must admit that it may be a continu- 
ous process, we cannot distinguish, still less separate, 
regeneration and _ sanctification. The analogy of 
physical birth cannot be pressed here; enough for us 
to know that the commencement and the continuance 
of the Christian life are both alike from God. 

(ii) According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus Himself 
did distinguish the life in the flesh and the life in the 
Spuit. ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and 


428 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


that which is born of the Spirit is spirit’ (John 
ll. 6). 

(a) The respectable Pharisee, moral and religious, the 
ruler of the Jews, was still living the life of the flesh, 
and could not either understand or enter into the 
Kingdom of God, the new order of life in the Spirit 
(cf. vv. 3 and 5). The flesh does not mean a sensual or 
immoral life; it means a life in which God as shown 
and offered unto men as their highest good has not 
yet been received. It does not mean a life without 
God, but it does mean a life in which the love of God 
as Father in the grace of Christ as Saviour and Lord 
by the community (common possession) of the Spirit 
has not yet been experienced. A life beginning in 
penitence and faith, receiving forgiveness, deliverance, 
peace, and power, energetic in love and inspired by 
hope, is a life in the Spirit, and not the flesh. How 
many there are who make the Christian profession 
who by such tests are still living in the flesh, and not 
the Spirit! It has been to the Church’s loss that this 
contrast has been often so disregarded and neglected ; 
and men still in the flesh have been allowed, because 
they made the Christian profession, to assume to their 
own hurt and loss that theirs was the life in the Spirit. 
There is a morality, and even a religion, which is still 
natural, the product of human endeavour, and not 
spiritual, the receiving and the responding to the life 
of God in man by His own Spirit. 

(6) Paul makes a further distinction; the flesh for 
him means the sinful life, not necessarily or exclu- 
sively sensual, the life in which sin is so dominant 
that there is a bondage of the will (Rom. vii. 7 -25). 
The man in such a state is carnal (sarkikos, sometimes 
sarkinos). But there is also the psychical or natural 
man (1 Cor. xv. 44-49), a man such as Nicodemus, 
who may in his own way be good and godly, but who 
has not had the experience of enlightening, quicken- 
ing, and renewing by the Spirit of God. He may be 
a very fine specimen of humanity in intellectual 
capacity and moral character, but he still lacks ‘ the 
one thing needful,’ the immediate contact, the in- 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 429 


timate communion with God, the constant depend- 
ence on and entire submission to God. He may be 
virtuous and conscientious (and we shall not dare to 
say that he is all that he is without God), but he has 
not consciously or voluntarily realised this relation 
to God. He may accept the testimony of others 
concerning God’s existence, and on that testimony 
he may himself confess that God is, but he has not 
in his own life had any experience of God. He may 
be in Tertullian’s phrase an anima naturaliter Chris- 
tiana;* but he is still soulish, psychical, and not 
spiritual (pneumatic). This distinction is not a theo- 
logical subtlety ; it is a discriminating analysis of the 
facts of human life in its relation to God. It is a 
serious error, often made, to assume that the posses- 
sion of virtues which are marks of the Christian 
character is itself a proof of life in the Spirit. It is 
said often that it does not matter what a man believes; 
what matters is what he does. If by belief is meant 
acceptance of doctrines, then assuredly the possession 
of character is more important. But Christian faith 
is not merely belief; it is as the typical Christians 
have understood it, such a personal union with Christ 
that there is both conscious communion with Him, and 
consequent conformation to His character (2 Cor, i. 
18). And as man was made for such conscious and 
voluntary relation to God, and Christ lived, taught, 
wrought, suffered, died, rose again, and liveth for 
ever more to mediate that relation, it does matter, and 
very much, whether the character has its motive and 
power in such a relation to God. Morality is com- 
pleted in religion, and the moral character is at its 
best as it has spiritual sustenance. The natural or 
psychical man, however excellent morally, is not yet 
man at his very best, or man as God wants him to be, 
for God wants not only obedience to His law, but also 
communion with His love. The Christian Church 
often lacks vitality and vigour because it acquiesces 
in an outward conformity to Christian standards, and 
does not constantly pursue as its distinctive object the 
1 De Test. An., 1,2. 


430 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


inward transformation of the life in the Spirit. Not 
only is the natural man incomplete in regard to his 
personal relation to God, the finest Christian graces 
are dependent on that relation; contrition and 
humility are not likely to mark the man who while 
doing justly, and loving mercy, does not walk with 
God at all. There are flowers of goodness, beautiful 
and fragrant, which can grow only in a heavenly air. 
Further, the man who for his goodness relies on his 
own sufficiency of strength will not only limit his 
aspiration to his own possibility of achievement, but 
will be much more liable to relapse even from the 
standard which he has set himself. There is a wide 
range of character and conduct represented by the 
natural or psychical man; at his worst he may sink 
to the man who is in bondage to the flesh ; at his best 
he may rise to resemble as regards his outward life very 
closely the spiritual man; but the difference remains 
between the man who lives by and for himself, and 
the man whose inner life God fills with His own Spirit. 

(c) What are the characteristics of the spiritual 
man? In his achievement, while the grace of God 
is not yet in full possession, he may as regards conduct 
and character fall short morally of the natural man, 
who by heredity, environment, and education has had, 
as it were, a moral start of him; but in aspiration and 
purpose he will be seeking and striving for such a 
perfection of life as becomes a child of the perfect 
Father. A spirituality which is indifferent to sancti- 
fication is a hollow sham. Only he is Christ’s who has 
Christ’s Spirit (Rom. viii. 9), and the fruit of the Spirit 
is love, which is the fulfilment of all law, which does 
no ill to a neighbour, but seeks to do all the good that 
it can (Gal. v. 22; Rom. xiii. 10). If we are to be 
guided in our thought by the disclosures of Christian 
experience in the New Testament, we may recognise 
two distinctive features of the spiritual life as the 
evidence of the presence and operation of the Spirit 
of God.' The first is fervour, zeal, enthusiasm. The 


* See the volume of Essays by various writers entitled The Spirit, especially 
iii. and iv. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 431 


experience of the reality of God as love and the grace 
of Christ as Saviour and Lord moves the emotions ; 
even when the first excitement subsides, there 1s a 
steady inward glow. Coldness and deadness of feeling 
depart. There are joy, comfort, peace, confidence, 
courage. <A life which shows these qualities is an 
attractive life; it is a persuasive witness of the reality 
of salvation; and it is because the life of so many 
professing Christians is so tepid and timid that many 
are repelled, and not attracted, to Christ. To force 
feeling, to keep up excitement, is not wholesome; but 
there should be an exaltation of feeling as a constant 
tone of the Christian life of the Spirit as God within 
is realised in experience. Some may call this fanati- 
cism; the eighteenth century was afraid of any en- 
thusiasm ; but then the Evangelical Revival came, 
and the Spirit’s presence and operation were again 
experienced. This is the need, and also the promise, 
of to-day; there is a stirrmg among the dry bones, 
and the breath of God is abroad (Ezek. xxxvii. 1-14). 
The second mark (and the two are closely related) is 
power, might, energy. When the feelings are moved, 
the will is strengthened. Recent psychology has 
shown how much the mind can do in relieving pain, 
releasing from weakness, and restoring strength. 
When the human will, surrendered to God, becomes 
the channel of the activity of God by His Spirit, 
then divine strength is perfected in human weakness 
(2 Cor. xii. 9-10). The language of Paul must seem 
extravagant to many Christians, who have not fully 
trusted and so have not fully proved the sufficiency 
of the grace of Christ. We can be more than con- 
querors through Him who loves us, and in love imparts 
Himself to us (Rom. viii. 37). We can do all things 
through Him who strengthens us (Phil. iv. 13). We 
ean gain the victory which overcometh the world 
through faith in Him who Himself overcame (1 John 
v. 4; John xvi. 33). Divine resources are at human 
disposal in the fully surrendered life. As an inspired 
life, enthusiasm and energy may be constant features, 
distinguishing the Christian life from every other in 


432 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


which the same presence and power of the Spirit of 
God is not experienced. 

It is the writer’s conviction that what the Church 
needs is not a second Pentecost as regards the divine 
gift, but as regards the human receiving and respond- 
ing to that gift, which has never been withdrawn. 
Not only occasionally in religious revivals, but con- 
tinuously in the religious life of all Christians, may the 
Pentecostal blessing be claimed. Whether it be a 
law or not of the religious life that there should be a 
rise and a fall, a rhythmic movement of emotion, it 
is certain that the ebb of the tide goes far further 
than need be, and so the flow has to be more marked. 
Surely there need not-be such extremes of depression 
and exaltation; but there might be, if Christians 
lived and walked more by the Spirit, a constant eleva- 
tion in the zeal and the power of Christian experience 
and character. To fall under the dominion of the 
flesh is a danger that mature Christians should have 
outgrown; but even they run the peril of sinking from 
the spiritual (pneumatic) to the natural (psychical) 
level; that spiritual life needs to be nourished by the 
means of grace, prayer, study of the Scriptures, 
meditation, public worship, the use of the sacrament 
of thanksgiving and fellowship, the preaching of the 
Gospel, the communion of saints, and no less does it 
need to be exercised in consecration, service, and 
sacrifice. If the Church were ever thus distinguished 
from the world in the experience and character of all 
its members, so that the Spirit’s presence and power 
were made manifest, Jesus Christ as Saviour and 
Lord would be so lifted up before men that He would 
draw all men unto Himself out of the carnal, and even 
the natural, into the spiritual life. 

(7) The bearing of the description of the Christian 
life, its characteristics and its source, on some of 
the controversies of the past may very briefly be 
indicated. 

(i) The Pelagian and the Arminian controversy 
were both concerned with the relation between human 
freedom and divine grace; although it would be an 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 433 


injustice to regard Arminianism as only Pelagianism 
revived, for the Arminians did recognise, while 
emphasising human liberty and responsibility, the 
necessity of the divine grace to salvation as the 
Pelagians did not. As is likely to be the case in 
controversy, each side was guilty of exaggeration. 
Man is not in so helpless and hopeless a bondage to 
sin as Augustine represented; he is not so free to 
choose and do any and every good as Pelagius con- 
tended. Heredity, environment, education, character 
as the result of previous conduct—all limit and restrain 
hberty, and so hamper the good choice. To affirm, 
however, that man can do no good by the exercise of 
his will, and that the grace of God is irresistible when 
it is imparted to any man, is to ignore and deny the 
facts of life. In Augustinianism we may see the 
tendency of religion carried to an extreme, and in 
Pelagianism the tendency of morality. The one 
emphasises man’s dependence until it reduces him to 
impotence; the other emphasises man’s liberty until 
it exalts him to sufficiency. The truth which corrects 
the error is that his dependence, if it is to be moral, 
must be free, and his freedom, if it is to be religious, 
must be dependent. He works out his own salvation 
not in spite, but because of God’s working in him. 
Freedom must appropriate grace, and grace must 
sustain freedom. God and man are so immediately 
and intimately related that God’s activity does not 
exclude man’s, or man’s God’s. What led Augustine 
and those who followed in his steps astray, was that 
they thought of grace as quasi-physical, as power, and 
since it was God’s power it must needs be regarded 
as omnipotent. But if God’s grace be His personal 
activity in a personal relation to man, in which man 
is not merely passive, but must be active, then grace 
will be conditioned by the receptive and the responsive 
faith, and never will suppress but always will support 
freedom; for where the Spirit of God is, there is the 
liberty and not the bondage of man.! 

1 A recent admirable treatment of this problem is Oman’s Grace and 
Personality. 

2E 


434 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(ii) This controversy is only one instance of the 
necessity of basing doctrine on experience and not on 
inferences from texts often misunderstood. Modern — 
psychology enables us to examine and estimate that 
experience much more accurately than was possible 
before, and we have, therefore, always to bring all 
dogmas to the test of actuality. Undoubtedly, Augus- 
tine’s theology was an interpretation of his own ex- 
perience, as was that of Pelagius, but in both cases it 
was experience not adequately scrutinised, and even 
recklessly generalised. When we do examine ex- — 
perience, individual and collective, we are led to the 
conclusion that man has always enough liberty left — 
to accept or to reject the grace of God which is offered 
to him, and so is responsible, if he is not saved by that 
erace, granted that the offer of salvation has been 
effectively presented to him, and that many men do 
attain good moral character without any conscious 
and voluntary dependence on the grace of God, but 
that the finest type of character, marked by contrition, 
humility, sacrificial love, is not attained unless as 
faith is ever receiving and responding to grace. The 
Christian life in its distinctive features is impossible 
without the activity of the Spirit of God, and may be 
regarded as the fruit of that Spirit, the divine power 
within expressing itself through human aspiration and 
endeavour in fullness, freedom, quietness, and charm ~ 
in the Christian graces and virtues. It belongs to 
Christian dogmatics to deal with the Christian life 
as the work of the Spirit of God in man; as a human 
task, from the standpoint of duties rather than graces 
and virtues as the fruit of the Spirit, the Christian 
life has to be dealt with by Christian ethics. And 
since, as has already been indicated, the approach | 
to-day is sociological rather than psychological, what 
Christian ethics has to do is not so much to determine 
what the Christian character ought to be as to describe 
the ideal of what society should be to be fully Christian. 
It is now current usage to speak of this ideal as the 
Kingdom of God. It is the writer’s intention to - 
complete this series of three volumes on Christian 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE © 485 


theology with a volume on the Christian Ideal of the 
IXingdom of God. The subject cannot be further 
pursued here. 

(8) In the preceding pages the two ideals which have 
been dealt with are holiness and love. The Christian 
life should also be related to the other three, truth, 
beauty, and blessedness. 

(1) By truth in the Christian life we mean generally 
truthfulness and faithfulness, honesty of conduct, and 
sincerity of motive. Besides this we should emphasise 
what the beatitude about the pure in heart means 
(Matt. v. 8). The Christian has a single motive, and 
not mixed motives. He is not good to gain anything 
else than goodness itself, praise, fame, safety, comfort, 
not even happiness, nor heaven. The fruit is good 
because the tree is good (vii. 16-20). The inner man 
is what the outer man shows. This is subjective 
truth, moral reality in the whole personality. But 
we must go deeper than that. ‘ The pure in heart 
shall see God,’ because his moral reality is itself the 
revelation of what God is. The Christian life in 
fellowship with God and in likeness to God is repro- 
ducing the ultimate, essential, final reality. The 
actual has only temporary existence; the ideal has 
eternal reality. The Christian life is at the secret 
source of things. His conduct is often regarded as 
unpractical ; and so it is and should be according to 
merely social standards, temporary expediencies, 
fleeting fashions of an hour, worldly and selfish in- 
terests. Given time and scope, however, it alone is 
practical, because it 1s in accordance with the nature 
of things, as determined by the will of God. God 1s 
not on ‘ the side of the big battalions ’ of force, greed, 
selfishness, and worldliness; He is with the good and 
godly man. If God is the ultimate cause and final 
purpose of the universe, if Christ reveals God, and if 
the Christian life reproduces Christ, then that life 
is, both subjectively as regards its motive and‘objec- 
tively as regards its content, truth: 1t corresponds with 
reality.! | 

‘This is the conception which dominates the Fourth Gospel. 


436 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(ii) As the Christian life is truth, it will also be 
beauty. There are ugly things in the world, especially 
where man’s wasteful methods of using nature’s 
resources have marred and soiled its face, and there 
are ugly creatures in colour and shape, at least for 
our taste, but the world as a whole is beautiful, a 
unity of many differences, a harmony of many dis- 
cords, a reconciliation of many contrasts. It gives 
aesthetic satisfaction, the emotions are not distracted 
but unified in pleasure. Not only so, a higher in- 
tellectual satisfaction accompanies the aesthetic ; 
nature is expressive, it has meaning and worth for 
human personality. It is a symbol of eternal and 
infinite perfection. Men have truly spoken of the 
Beauty of God:? that is one element at least in the 
Biblical phrase, the glory of God, the perfection of 
God as manifested. Mistranslation though the phrase 
itself may be, there is a ‘ beauty of holiness ’ (Ps. ex. 
3). A character may be more than a rival of a work 
of art in offering even the aesthetic satisfaction of a 
consistency of manifold interests and activities.? The 
word grace itself means charm as well as goodness. 
There is a legal righteousness which repels, and does 
not attract. But a life shaped to harmony by love 
will be beautiful, as was the life of Jesus. The nearer 
the life gets to truth, the divine reality, the more will 
it show beauty, the glory of God. The manner will 
surely be gracious as the motive is grace (Phil. iv. 8). 

(iii) A Christian life in which the ideals of holiness 
and love, truth and beauty are realised cannot fail 
in attaining blessedness; not the pleasure of the 
moment, not the happiness of the outward lot, it may 
be, but the peace of God which passeth all understand- 
ing (Phil. iv. 7), which the world cannot give and the 
world cannot take away, the peace which Jesus claimed 
as His (John xiv. 27), the rest of soul (Matt. x1. 29), the 
joy of the Lord (Matt. xxv. 21), that joy for which 
He endured the Cross, despising shame (Heb. xii. 2), a 


1 This attribute of God is recognised by the Cambridge Platonists. 
2 Ruskin has analysed the conception of beauty, Modern Painters, Part ILL, 
Section 1., chap. xii. 1. 


THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 437 


share in the life of the blessed God (1 Tim. i. 11). 
Thus in Christian life alone is human personality 
being perfected, all its ideals realised, not by human 
endeavour alone, but by divine grace, by participa- 
tion in the perfection of God in the indwelling and 
inworking of His Spirit; and that perfecting is not 
individual, but collective, because that Spirit is the 
common possession of those who believe, who b 
faith are members of the body of Him who is fulfill- 
ing all the human ideals in all the human persons 
(Eph. 1. 23). 


CHAPTER IV 
THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 


(1) Many religions look backwards to a Golden Age. 
Confucius sought to remedy the evils of his own time 
by recovering the wisdom of the past. The Old 
Testament has a forward look, to the day of Yahweh, 
or to the coming of the Messiah, to the resurrection 
of the righteous and the judgment of the wicked. 
Christianity took over this Jewish inheritance, but 
transformed it, and in the New Testament we can 
trace a development of thought from an eschatology 
closely conforming to that of Judaism to a Christian 
hope more consistent with the distinctiveness of the 
revelation of God and the redemption of man in Jesus 
Christ. If Christianity had no answer to the question 
about future destiny, individual and racial, it would be 
incomplete as a religion, as failmg to meet an in- 
sistent demand of the spirit of man. The earlier 
Buddhism (the Hinayana) offered Nirvana, either non- 
existence or non-conscious existence; but the later 
Buddhism (the Mahayana) had to define the future 
life much more distinctly. Confucianism avoided the 
question, and so the Chinese add Buddhism to meet 
a demand Confucianism fails to satisfy.? 

(i) From the beginnings of religion in the doctrine 
of animism a survival of the soul is believed; but 
this is not a hope but a dread, as in the abode of the 
dead life is cheerless, hopeless, powerless, vain. It 
is this belief that is the background of the Old 
‘Testament. 


‘In death there is no remembrance of Thee : 
In Sheol who shall give Thee thanks?’ (Ps. vi. 5.) 


* See The Three Religions of China, by W. E. Soothill, 





435 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 439 


* Let the wicked be ashamed, let them be silent in Sheol.’ 
(xxx1. 17.) 
* Wilt Thou shew wonders to the dead ? 
Shall they that are deceased arise and praise Thee ? 
Shall Thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave ? 
Or Thy faithfulness in Destruction (feb. Abaddon) ? 
Shall Thy wonders be known in the dark ? 
And Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness ? ’ 
(Ixxxviit. 10-12.) 


Kven the relation to God is ended in the unseen world. 
The interest of the Old Testament is almost entirely 
centred on the earthly life as the scene of God’s 
providence, as the sphere of man’s duty. It is not 
concerned for the most part with individual destiny 
at all, but with the character and condition of 
a nation here on earth. It is here that God is 
dealing with men, it is here that men must serve 
Him. 

(11) It is admitted by most scholars that there are a 
few passages which indicate a dawning hope of in- 
dividual immortality. When after the fall of the 
nation the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel began to 
teach the truth of an individual relation to God, such 
a hope became a possibility. The passages in which 
it is found are obscure and uncertain. To the writer 
it seems probable that Psalms xvi. 10-11 and xvii. 15 
do express the hope, but many scholars deny this. 
Most scholars do admit that Psalm Ixxii. 28-26 does 
rise to the hope. What may be said is that the hope 
was not general, even if now and then a saint in the 
fervour of his devotion and the strength of his faith 
soared above the common view, and dared to believe 
that his fellowship with God, his highest good, would 
not, and could not, be severed by death. The more 
generally held hope for the individual came by way 
of the hope for the nation. There was the expec- 
tation of a Golden Age in the future for the nation : 
but it seemed unrighteous and unreasonable that 
only the generation alive at the time of its coming 
should enjoy its good, and thus the hope arose 
that the righteous would be brought back to this 

earthly life to experience what they had expected. 


440 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


At first the eager longing is expressed by the 
prophet : 


* May thy dead live, may thy corpses arise.’ 


Then comes the confident assurance : 


* Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust : 
For thy dew is as the dew of light, 
And the earth will bring forth shades.’ (Is. xxvi. 19).1 


In the Apocalypse of Daniel a resurrection of the 
wicked is also declared: ‘And many of them that 
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to 
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting 
contempt. And they~that be wise shall shine as the 
brightness of the firmament; and they that turn 
many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever ’ 
(xii. 2-3). In this Apocalyptic literature of which 
the Book of Daniel is an example the eschatology of 
the Old Testament was further developed. The 
supernatural features were introduced; individuals 
were included in God’s dealings; the judgment was 
extended to other nations, and made general; and a 
system of symbolism was elaborated. Into the details 
it is not necessary for our purpose to enter; but we 
must remember that it was not the Old Testament 
teaching alone which the Christian Church inherited, 
but also this Jewish Apocalyptic. 

(2) It is noteworthy that Jesus rebuked the gross, 
materialistic doctrine of the Pharisees regarding the 
Resurrection, the absurdity of which was exhibited 
in the Sadducees’ illustration of the woman who had 
been the wife of seven husbands (Mark xii. 18-27), 
and at the same time He affirmed the individual hope 
of immortality on the same ground as that given in 
the Old Testament. 

(i) The physical conditions and the social relations 
of this earthly life will not be restored, but the fellow- 
ship of the saints with God will not be interrupted ; 
because God enters into personal relations with men, 
they are assured of immortality. The crude notion 


* Schultz, Old Testament Theology, ii. pp. 386-7. 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 441 


which has sometimes been put forward in the theology 
of the Christian Church of a material identity of the 
resurrection body with the present ‘ vesture of our 
mortality ’ is set aside, as it is by Paul (1 Cor. xv. 
42-49), in the contrast he makes between the natural 
and the spiritual body. This hope of continued 
fellowship with God in the unseen world is more fully 
developed in the Fourth Gospel, where the emphasis 
is laid on personal communion with Christ, yet also 
with God in Him (xiv.-xvii.). Those who believe in 
Him have eternal life here and now, and cannot come 
under the power of death. To this we must after- 
wards return when dealing with the later develop- 
ments in the New Testament. 
_—(i1) In the Synoptic Gospels what holds the fore- 
eround is the conception of the Kingdom of God. 
What Jesus meant by the term has been much dis- 
puted, and to follow this discussion in detail would 
lead us far afield. It is maintained that He conceived 
that Kingdom as future, transcendent, yet near at 
hand, to be ushered in by a supernatural intervention 
of God in human history. It 1s even contended that 
Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah in the earthly 
life, but only the herald of the Kingdom, at the 
coming of which He would assume that office.t There 
are, however, a number of passages which indicate 
that the Kingdom is already present, that it will grow, 
and that its progress depends not on God only, but 
also on the activities of men (Luke xvu. 21; the 
parables in Matt. xii, ete.). If Jesus did believe 
Himself to be the Messiah, and accepted the confession 
of Peter that He was the Messiah (Matt. xvi. 16)—and 
the writer sees no adequate reason for doubting the 
fact—then in His presence in the world and His 
activity in and with men the Kingdom had come 
already, although it might yet be made more manifest 
in its power and glory. 

(i) That Jesus did anticipate such a manifestation 
is a conclusion from the available evidence which 


1 See The Quest of the Historical Jesus, by Schweitzer, and The Gospel and 
the Church, by Loisy. 


442 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


it is difficult, even impossible, to evade. He fore- 
told not only His own Resurrection, but also His 
Return, His Second Advent from heaven (Matt. xvi. 
28; Mark xii. 26-27, xiv. 62). Regarding this escha- 
tological teaching several considerations need to be 
taken into account. As in the Apostolic Age the 
expectation was very confident and intense, it is 
not improbable that the teaching of Jesus has been 
coloured by the channel of its transmission, and made 
more definite and certain than it at first was. The 
prophetic language regarding the future must neces- 
sarily be to a large extent figurative, poetry and not 
prose, and the Apocalyptic literature was marked by 
an abundant and even sometimes extravagant sym- 
bolism. Even if we have the ipsissima verba of Jesus 
we need not interpret them literally ; He may have 
been conveying moral and religious truth in this 
borrowed eschatological form. Again, the promise 
of the future cannot be fulfilled to the letter, since 
freedom is a factor in all human history which God’s 
providence does not suppress, but recognises. Even if 
Jesus in the exercise of His function as a prophet 
Himself at the time envisaged the future more nearly 
as it is represented in His teaching, it is no deprecia- 
tion of His truth and wisdom to admit, as facts compel 
us to admit, that the subsequent course of history did 
not closely correspond with the expectations as so 
expressed. He did definitely anticipate the fall of 
Jerusalem within the lifetime of some of his hearers, 
and that expectation was fulfilled (Mark xiii. 30). 
While He appears to connect His Second Advent 
with that event, He does expressly confess ignorance 
of the exact date. ‘ Of that day or that hour knoweth 
ho one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, 
but the Father’ (Mark xiii. 32). If He knew not the 
date, did He, and under the conditions of the Incarna- 
tion could He, literally foretell the manner of His 
Second Advent ? 

(iv) Only in the Fourth Gospel is the resurrection 
of the wicked to judgment connected with the Second 
Advent. ‘Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 443 


in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, 
and shall come forth ; they that have done good, unto 
the resurrection of life; and they that have done ill, 
unto the resurrection of judgment’ (v. 28-29). In view 
of the fact that Paul in 1 Corinthians xv. in expound- 
ing the doctrine of the Resurrection makes no mention 
of the wicked, that the language here expresses the 
doctrine in the materialistic form which Jesus ex- 
pressly rebuked, and that this statement is incon- 
sistent with the general teaching of the discourse in 
which it occurs, dealing as that does with the spiritual 
resurrection through faith in Christ, the present judg- 
ment of Christ, and the eternal life already possessed 
in Him, we may reject this and such like statements 
elsewhere as later editorial insertions, reproducing 
current beliefs, and not the teaching of Jesus. What 
is certain is that Jesus did expect a speedy Second 
Advent. This is a proof of His confident faith in 
God, and His eager desire to accomplish the task 
entrusted to Him. He did not fully take into account 
the delays and hindrances which sin and unbelief 
might interpose, although at times He did recognise 
that the lack of faith in man might frustrate the grace 
of God. ‘The view of the Incarnation expounded in 
this volume not only permits but demands such an 
explanation. As the New Testament proves, Jesus 

did come again to His disciples as the constant and 
sovereign presence (Matt. xxviii. 20); He did con- 
tinue His activity in His Spirit; He is coming ever 
more fully into the world in the conquests of His 
truth and grace. What more there may be in the 
future as fulfilment of this hope of the Kingdom will 
be discussed later. 

v (8) The Christian Church took over the Apocalyptic 
teaching of Judaism, with this difference. It con- 
fessed that Jesus as the Christ had already come, 
and He in His Second Coming became the centre 
of the Apocalyptic drama. He would come again in 
power and glory as Judge of the wicked, and as 
Saviour of believers; their salvation would be com- 
pleted in their resurrection, and the resurrection of 


444 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


those who had fallen asleep in Jesus in their participa- 
tion in His Kingdom. | 

(1) Paul did represent the common Christian attitude 
in the confident expectation he often expresses of sur- 
vival to the Second Advent. How he conceives the re- 
surrection is fully set forth in 1 Corinthians xv. 42-49, 
although there is some dispute as to the exact meaning, 
Is the sowing referred to the burial in the grave, or is 
it In this earthly life of which the grave is the goal ? 
Whichever it may be, what Paul emphasises is the 
contrast of the natural body (corruption, dishonour, 
weakness) and the spiritual body (incorruption, glory, 
power). Those who are alive at the Second Advent, 
too, must be changed suddenly from the natural to 
the spiritual body. He, however, recognises the 
possibility that he may die, and not be alive to ex- 
perience this change. He does not expect, however, 
to be disembodied spirit, but to have a body, a 
heavenly; he will not be unclothed, but clothed 
upon (2 Cor. v. 1-10). He is willing to be absent from 
this body, that he may be at home with the Lord. 
We cannot say that he changed his mind, but he 
wavered between the two expectations according to 
the mood in which the state of his health placed him. 
For even after this utterance he reverts to the common 
apostolic hope (Phil. iii. 20-21). With that hope his 
faith-mysticism, as it has been called, is also incon- 
gruous. He is conscious of an immediate personal 
contact and intimate personal communion with the 
living Christ; to him to live is Christ, and therefore 
to die gain (Phil. i. 21), as bringing him still nearer 
to his Lord. Why then, we may ask, should he desire 
the visible Return? There lie in his mind together 
the Jewish inheritance and the Christian experience, 
not only unharmonised but probably for him not 
needing to be brought into accord (ef. 2 Tim. iv. 6-8). 
We may, however, prefer as his contribution to a 
constructive theology these two elements: (1) the 
present union of the believer with Christ, and (2) the 
entrance of the believer at death into a still fuller 
life with Christ, | 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 4A5 


(11) Although in the Fourth Gospel there appear 
references to the Apocalyptic hope, these are probably 
to be regarded as editorial additions; the distinctive 
teaching of the Gospel is similar to that of Paul: the 
presence of Christ with the believer as the source of 
his eternal life, and the consequent exemption from 
death of the possessor of that eternal life in Him 
(John v. 21-24, 26-27, vi. 47-51). The question arises, 
how far is this teaching a report of what Jesus did 
teach, and how far is it a later development in the 
mind of the evangelist? The writer after a minute 
study of the Gospel! has reached the conclusion that 
this Gospel does preserve a type of teaching reserved 
for a few select disciples in advance of what is re- 
corded by the Synoptists ; but that pregnant sayings, 
remembered by one of these disciples, have been 
developed into more explicit statements. Both Paul 
and the writer of the Fourth Gospel bring Christian 
experience to correct the Jewish inheritance; and 
we need not retain what they were themselves out- 
growing. 

(4) The Christian Church has never formally 
abandoned this Jewish Apocalyptic. In every age 
the book of Daniel and of the Revelation have 
found their interpreters, who have by ingenious 
calculations been able to prove to their own satis- 
faction the literal fulfilment of the supposed predic- 
tions in these writings, and to fix the precise date of 
the Second Advent. Asa result of the War there has 
been a recrudescence of this superstition, and many 
Christians are to-day anticipating the Lord’s Second 
Advent very soon. As this anticipation has century 
after century been falsified, and the calculations by 
which it is supported have constantly to be revised 
when the alleged date is passed, we may confidently 
assert that a theology which desires to be intelligent 
and intelligible can disregard it. 

(i) Christ is here and now present (Matt. xxviii. 
18-20) ; but His presence may be made more manifest 
in the world through His Church, which as His body 

1 See Lhe Beloved Disciple, pp. 202-204. 


446 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


speaks and acts for Him in the fulfilment of the 
redemptive purpose of God (Eph. i. 15-23). In His 
truth and grace as Saviour and Lord He is coming 
more fully into the thought and life of mankind. 
There are hindrances and delays in the progress of 
His Sovereign Saviourhood. But it does seem to 
Christian faith that He is subduing the kingdoms of 
the world to Himself. We are not warranted in 
assuming that the progress will be necessarily gradual ; 
there may be crises, years more significant for the 
manifestation of Him than centuries have been; but 
it would be contrary to the expectation, to which a 
study of the method of the divine providence as dis- 
closed in history leads us to assume that the moral 
and religious process will be interrupted by a super- 
natural divine intervention. It does seem more 
reasonable to suppose that the consummation of the 
progress will be achieved by the same means as are 
now being used in winning the world for Christ as 
Saviour and Lord. On this assumption, what would 
take the place of the Apocalyptic hope of the Second 
Advent would be the confident expectation that 
the redemption of the human race will at last be 
accomplished. 

(ii) To this expectation, which is probably very 
widely cherished as the inspiration of manifold forms 
of Christian service for human betterment, there are 
three objections to be considered. First of all, as 
has already been indicated, we are not warranted in 
assuming that every human soul will repent and be- 
heve, and that God can in any way compel man, if 
unwilling, to receive salvation. This possibility tfor- 
bids a too confident hope of the whole race being 
completely redeemed from sin unto God. Secondly, 
it may be doubted whether this earthly life is by its 
very conditions fitted to be the scene of the perfect 
manifestation of the truth and grace of God in Christ 
Jesus. In view of the faults and failures even of the 
saints, can we be sure that there will ever be on earth 
a period when a sinless race will inhabit the old scene 
of so tragic a fall from goodness and God? Can man 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 44.7 


in this natural body attain to the full stature of man- 
hood in Christ (Eph. iv. 13)? Are not other con- 
ditions necessary for man’s perfect personal develop- 
ment ? Thirdly, science foretells a physical change 
for this earth which will make it no longer habitable 
by men.’ Can we be confident that the progress of 
mankind will be completed before that close to earth’s 
evolution ? Can we suppose that a purpose of God 
could be interrupted by such a physical catastrophe ? 
Can faith confidently meet any such challenge by 
asserting that, as God is Creator as well as Redeemer, 
the process of nature and the progress of history must 
both be so ordered by Him that the one subserves 
the other? Here we are in the region of conjecture. 
We must admit as an alternative view, less probable 
it may be, but not improbable, that the Kingdom of 
God will never in all its glory be manifest here, but 
that the history of man on earth is preparatory for 
a consummation of the Kingdom in the unseen world, 
when a redeemed race shall have been gathered home. 
This admission does not, however, rob us of the hope 
that the Kingdom of God can be advanced on earth, 
that by the truth and grace of Christ the race can be 
prepared here for that consummation though it may 
be in the unseen world. One advantage this alter- 
native view may claim. The Kingdom of God may 
be conceived too narrowly as earthly goods and not 
as a heavenly good, as material advantage and not as 
personal perfection. And this peril would certainly 
be avoided by our recognition that this earth for 
God’s purpose has a value subordinate to that unseen 
world for which we are here preparing. 

(iii) The writer cannot himself escape the feeling 
(conviction would be too definite a word) that it 
would be fitting that this earth which has witnessed 
the tragedy of man’s sin, and the tragedy of Christ’s 
sacrifice, should also be the scene of the triumph of 
the grace of God. As regards the three objections 
this at least may be said. Do men who refuse the 


! Jn view of the most recent developments of physics, this prediction is 
now less contidently maintained. 


448 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Gospel now have the love of God so presented to them 
as to constrain, not compel, their faith and surrender ? 
In the unseen world, or in a future age, may not 
that Gospel yet be so presented as to overcome all 
resistance by its appeal? Again, since society is 
still so un-Christian, may not saints even be hindered 
from being the best that they can be? In a world 
more pervaded by the Spirit of Christ what possi- 
bilities of saintliness might there not be! It is a 
subtle dualism to assume that life on earth must 
necessarily be imperfect. The sin of the race would 
then appear as a natural necessity, and not a voluntary 
departure from the possibility of a sinless development. 
As to the relation of the moral and spiritual progress 
of mankind to the physical changes on the earth we 
can say nothing confidently except that God as Re- 
deemer is one and the same with God as Creator, and 
so between the two orders there will be harmony. If 
this should all appear theological speculation, the 
motive of it is to find a rational justification for the 
religious conviction that Christ is supreme in the 
realms of nature and of grace alike as the Son revealing 
the Father and the Saviour redeeming men. Which- 
ever of the two alternatives we may prefer, the duty 
is plain to do all that can be done to secure the mani- 
festation of the truth and grace of Christ, the Kingdom 
of God, as fully as can be, not in isolated individuais 
only, but in mankind in all human relations and 
activities. Accordingly, it is not only in what is often 
called religious work distinctively that this end is to 
be furthered. It is the whole manhood of all mankind 
which is to be redeemed; and while the conscious 
and voluntary relation to God is the decisive, crucial 
interest, religion must never be only a department of 
life, it must be a quality given to the whole of life. 
The dominance of Christ in the domestic, economic, 
and political spheres belongs to the Kingdom of God on 
earth as well as to His rule within the soul of each man. 

(5) Although according to the Apocalyptic hope 
in its Jewish forms the general judgment of men was 
connected with the day of Yahweh or the advent of 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE AAO 


the Messiah, and in its Christian form with the Second 
Advent of Christ, even when the fulfilment of that 
hope was deferred, the question was not distinctly 
answered as to the condition of the dead until the 
resurrection of all mankind. Paul’s phrase about 
those ‘ which are fallen asleep in Christ’ (1 Cor. xv. 
18) has sometimes been made the basis of teaching 
about an intermediate state of reduced vitality, a 
continuation of the common view in heathenism.? 
Paul does not make any conjectures about the con- 
dition of the wicked; but as regards himself in the 
passage already discussed (2 Cor. v. 1-10) he antici- 
pates an immediate entrance to the heavenly life with 
Christ. Without explaining the contradiction to the 
Apocalyptic view, in the common belief of the Church 
it has been assumed that men do in the next life 
receive reward or punishment for the deeds done in 

this. 
~~ (i) While Roman Catholicism has a doctrine of a 
purgatory, in which souls not good enough for heaven 
are purified for entrance there, Protestantism has 
assumed generally that sinners go at death to hell, 
and saints to heaven. A doctrine of eternal punish- 
ment, of unceasing torment, not only for the very 
wicked, but for all who die unsaved by the grace of 
Christ, was till about fifty years ago assumed to be the 
only orthodox view; and there are still many Chris- 
tians with whom it is an article of faith, against which 
their heart may protest, but which they feel they 
must accept as the teaching of Scripture. In this 
doctrine metaphors are turned into dogmas. The 
differences of religious condition and moral character, 
of personal development, in sinners as in saints in- 
dividually, is ignored when the one or the other 
destiny is assigned to all. It is unwarrantably 
assumed that a physical event such as death irrevoc- 
ably fixes the personality, and thus also its destiny, 
that there can be no recovery from sin, and no pro- 
gress in goodness hereafter, that to each soul this 

1 For a speculative treatment of the intermediate state, as it has been 
called, see Christian Dogmatics, by Martensen, Eng. trans., pp. 457-62. 

2F 


450 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


earthly life has offered an adequate probation, a 
sufficient opportunity for receiving or rejecting the 
grace of God, that the love of God the Father has thus 
arbitrarily fixed the term of His dealing with men 
for their salvation. The writer on the contrary be- 
lieves that the love of God as revealed and realised 
in the grace of Christ does and will exhaust all the 
resources it can command to recover the son who was 
lost, and restore the dead in sin ; and that this earthly 
life for many has not offered the adequate opportunity 
for the pleading and the striving of the love of God, 
or for such a personal development as could be re- 
garded as a final rejection and resistance of the grace 
of Christ. The obscure passages (1 Peter iii. 19, 
iv. 6) which are the basis of the statement in the 
Apostles’ Creed regarding the descent into hell do 
indicate a belief, even in the Apostolic Age, that in 
the unseen world Christ still continues His work. 
The writer would base no doctrine on these texts, 
but finds a broad and sure foundation for the view 
that God’s dealing with men for their salvation in 
Christ does not end in death, on the one hand in God’s 
Fatherhood, which is surely love to the uttermost 
and to the end, and on the other hand in the in- 
completeness of personal development in this life. 
What truth there is in the doctrine of reward or 
punishment hereafter will be considered at a later 
stage of this discussion. 
y (it) In revolt against this view of eternal punish- 
ment there was strenuously advocated by a few 
theologians the theory of conditional immortality.! 
To state the theory as briefly as possible, it is this. 
Man has no natural immortality. He can attain 
immortality only as through faith in Christ he re- 
ceives eternal life from God. But here the theory 
may diverge in two directions. It may be main- 
tained that the spiritual death coincides with the 
physical death, and that only believers survive the 
death of the body. A more gracious view of God may, 


' See Life in Christ, by Edward White; Our Growing Creed, by W. D. 
M‘ Laren. 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 451 


however, lead to the modification of the theory, that 
even in the unseen world there may be for a time a 
continued opportunity of receiving the eternal life, 
and that the eternal death will come only when grace 
is finally refused. ‘To the cruder form of the theory 
the two objections already offered to the doctrine of 
eternal punishment apply; the physical event re- 
gardless of the stage of personal development reached 
eannot be decisive of eternal destiny, and the im- 
portunities of God’s love cannot be confined to this 
earthly life so long as there is any possibility of the 
response which brings salvation. In the more refined 
form the theory does not seem to stress enough the 
conviction that God will not abandon any soul He 
has made until His grace can do no more. In support 
of the theory reliance has been placed on taking 
literally the word death wherever it occurs in the New 
Testament as including spiritual as well as physical 
death, and in citing texts, and not enough on the 
general considerations as to the nature of God and 
His purpose for man as revealed in Christ, by which 
Christian theology should always be guided. While 
eternal life is made to depend on relation to Christ, 
yet what seems to be ignored is the Father-heart of 
God as laid bare in Jesus Christ. 

(iii) Speculatively dogmatic universalism is the most 
satisfactory solution of the problem; and there are 
texts which can be quoted in support of it, such as 
among others the following: ‘God hath shut up all 
unto disobedience that He might have mercy upon 
all’ (Rom. xi. 32). ‘ When all things have been 
subjected unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself 
be subjected to Him that did subject all things unto 
Him, that God may be all in all’ (1 Cor. xv. 28). 
‘God put all things in subjection under His feet, and 
gave Him to be head over all things to the church, 
which is His body, the complement of Him that com- 
pleteth all in all’ (Eph. 1, 22-23). ‘It was the good 
pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the 
completeness dwell ; and through Him to reconcile all 
things unto Himself, having made peace through the 


452 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things 
upon the earth, or things in the heavens’ (Col. i. 19- 
20). Such an inspired vision of the end is entirely 
congruous with the completeness of the revelation 
of God as Father, and of the redemption of man as 
son which is claimed by faith for Christ as Saviour 
and Lord. Such a hope, too, meets the yearnings of 
the Christian heart for the salvation of all. The two 
difficulties already mentioned alone forbid our assert- 
ing it dogmatically although we may cherish the hope 
confidently ;1 first, God cannot force any man to be 
saved, and second, man may refuse salvation. It 
may be we are not warranted in transporting into the 
unseen world conditions which we must recognise in 
this; it may be that ‘ within the veil’ God’s con- 
straint of love may prove irresistible, because faith 
will be freed from entanglements of this earthly life. 
This, however, we must affirm, that in the unseen 
world, as on earth, God saves only in His grace, and 
man is saved only by faith. 

(iv) Although in criticising these views the writer’s 
own position has been indicated, a fuller constructive 
statement may be offered. (a) While recognising fully 
the right of science to investigate all psychic pheno- 
mena, even the most obscure and remote from ordinary 
experience, and prepared to accept thoroughly verified 
evidence, the writer must confess himself quite un- 
convinced that spiritualism can offer a proof of 
survival of death which can be the foundation of a 
confident hope of immortality. The results, such as 
they are, do not offer a very attractive picture of the 
unseen world and the future life. If God who is love, 
and hallows and blesses human affection, had willed 
that we should have such communion with our 
beloved dead, He surely would have provided a 
highway through what is truest and best in us, and 
not confined us to these dubious, if not suspicious, 
byways. Our human love is purified and elevated 
because it is, not by sense, but by faith, relying on the 


1 See Dr. Cox’s Salvator Mundi; Farrar’s Mercy and Judgment; also 
Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, pp. 237-44. 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 453 


reality of God in Jesus Christ, that we are sure that 
our loved ones are a spiritual and not a sensuous 
presence with us, real to our unquenched affection, 
even when we long for ‘ the touch of a vanished hand, 
and the sound of a voice that is still.’ We are sure of 
God, not by sense, but by spirit, and our knowledge 
of our beloved dead is of the same kind, and value, 
because it is rooted in our faith in God. Spiritualism 
as such need have no moral or religious influence on 
him who in these devious ways seeks to communicate 
with the unseen. The Christian hope depends on a 
belief in the conservation of values, and that springs 
from faith in the reality of God as the absolute value. 
As the psalmist believed that death could not destroy 
the saint’s fellowship with God (Ixxili. 23-26), so to 
the Christian, to whom to live is Christ, death is gain 
(Phil. 1, 21), as assuring to him the clearer vision, the 
closer communion, and the greater resemblance to 
Christ. Even if the words refer to the Second Advent 
primarily, for the Christian to-day they hold true of 
his entrance into the world beyond the veil of death. 
‘It is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We 
know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like 
Him, for we shall see Him even as He is’ (1 John. in. 
2). We have this hope set on Christ (v. 3) because 
‘now we are the children of God.’ ‘ And if children, 
then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ ’ 
(Rom. vii. 17). Because He triumphed over death, 
it has for us no terrors; because He ever liveth, we 
shall live also with Him. Such a faith can stand 
upright and needs no crutch of spiritualism for Its 
support. 

(6) While the Christian hope is set on Christ, we 
must not ignore the testimony which the human 
reason, conscience, and heart also offer in confirma- 
tion, a subject which in a previous chapter has been 
touched on. The theory of conditional immortality 
iynores this testimony when it so confidently denies 
man’s immortality. We must, however, get away 
from the static to the dynamic view; immortality 
is not an inalienable possession of man; it is not a 


454 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


sift of nature, but a gain of development. God 
destined man for immortality as the consequent of 
his achievement of personality ; and God is doing all 
He can to assure man of immortality in enabling him 
by His grace to achieve his personality. As man grows 
in truth, holiness, love, doth he attain the blessedness 
of immortality. Man’s quest of truth, his attainment 
of holiness, his giving and getting love, is never com- 
pleted here on earth in this life, yet these ideals by 
their very nature demand full realisation, and thus, 
to use Kant’s term, postulate immortality as the only 
adequate opportunity for their realisation. It is not 
man’s failure to be what he ought to be that is the 
proof of immortality, but it is his promise of becoming 
what in the short span of life he had not yet become 
that points to the Beyond of his hope, where he shall 
be all that God made him to be. Now man sees the 
truth as ‘in a mirror darkly ; but then face to face.’ 
Now he ‘ knows in part, but then shall he know even 
as also he has been known’ (1 Cor. xiii. 12). Now 
he does not behold, or reflect as in a mirror, the 
glory of the Lord perfectly, but then he will perfectly 
be transformed into the same image from glory to 
glory (2 Cor. iii. 18). The purer and truer human 
love becomes, the more impossible is acquiescence in 
the severance of death. Souls have not through a 
common life of joy or sorrow, achievement or struggle, 
erown into a oneness that death can sever. While 
Jesus did rebuke the gross materialism of the Pharisaic 
view of the Resurrection, and did deny that earthly 
relationships as such continue unchanged (Mark xu. 
24-26), He did not destroy this hope; for within 
marriage or any other human relationship there may 
develop a human affection angelic in quality, fit for 
and worthy of heaven. If this earthly life is not com- 
pleted in the heavenly, whatever fleeting happiness 
the years may bring, that blessedness, that permanent 
and dominant inner harmony of the spirit of man, can 
never be attained. God made man for perfect per- 
sonality, and so immortality; and his development 
now holds the pledge thereof. 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 455 


yA 


/ (ce) This proof of immortality, depending as it does 
on the worth of personality, is no proof of the survival 
of those who refuse to become perfect persons by the 
realisation of the ideals. It has already been shown 
that in the Old Testament there is only one passage, 
and also in the New, in which the resurrection to © 
judgment of the wicked is taught. Eternal life is 
conditioned on faith in Christ, and eternal death is 
the wages of sin (Rom. vi. 23). Where the theory of 
conditional immortality in its recent forms has often 
failed is in making spiritual coincident with physical 
death, and in not allowing adequate opportunity for 
the acceptance of the eternal life, the achievement 
of immortality in the unseen world. Even for the 
wicked the probation is not necessarily ended at death, 
for God will do to the utmost all His love can do to 
save. While we recognise this promise of the future 
life, we must also maintain the possibility of a final 
refusal of grace, a fixity in sin and unbelief. For such 
souls, if any such there should be when God has done 
all He can, it is incredible that there should be con- 
tinuance of being in the misery which their character 
must bring with it. The writer at least is forced to 
the conclusion that there will be the forfeiture of 
immortality. Biology may here afford us an analogy. 
If an organism does not adapt itself to its environ- 
ment, it is not suddenly killed, it dies slowly ; so we 
need not assume any annihilation of the persistently 
wicked by a supernatural act of God, but only the 
inevitable consequence in decreasing vitality and 
vigour of personality, until it cease to be.? If re- 
demption be the end of creation, then the creature 
who refuses redemption annuls the very end of his 
creation. Why we cannot affirm the alternative of 
universal salvation has already been shown. The 
other alternative, that God continues creatures in 
existence for their everlasting torment, is a supposition 


1 What does Jesus mean when He speaks of the loss or the forfeit of life 
(Matt. xvi. 25-26) P 

2 See The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature, by Simpson, for the statement 
of the problem from the biological standpoint, chap. xvii. 


456 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


quite incredible for any who have seen God the Father 
in the face of Jesus Christ. It is only by some such 
view as this that we can do justice both to the revela- 
tion of God’s Fatherhood and the solemn warnings 
and passionate appeals of Christ Himself to the sinful 
to turn and live. There is an optimism regarding 
the future life which is not Christian. The wages of 
sin is death ; there is no peace to the wicked (Is. xlviil. 
22). Only faith in Christ assures the blessed and 
glorious immortality. 

(d) We may now look. a little more closely at what 
we may assume will be the conditions of the future life. 
First of all, we must affirm continuity amid change. 
The man will be mentally, morally, and spiritually 
one and the same as he was in this life, as an event 
such as physical death will not of itself convert the 
sinner or perfect the saint. There will, however, be 
change. The change of conditions may be judgment ; 
it may allow the man to see himself as amid the 
shows and shams of earth he has never seen himself. 
It may be the moment when he is shown whether the 
way he is pursuing will lead to his triumph or to 
his undoing. The sinner’s self-discovery may lead 
to his self-recovery as God’s grace is more clearly 
disclosed to him. The saint’s self-discovery may 
bring a contrition and amendment which will set him 
with unimpeded feet on the upward path. Degrada- 
tion through continuance in sin there may be; but 
surely there will be progress in the realisation of the 
ideals. The saint may dare to hope that sin will no 
longer easily beset him, that he will be able to run 
the race towards perfection more freely and speedily 
(Heb. xii. 1-3). Especially may we dare to hope for 
a clearer manifestation of Christ in His glory, and a 
closer conformity to what He is as a result of the more 
intimate communion (1 John i. 2). As symbolic the 
poetry of many of our hymns may suggest a blessedness 
which words cannot define, but the figurative lan- 
guage of the Holy Scriptures must not be taken with 
prosaic literalness. This clearer manifestation of 
Christ to the unbelieving may prove for their deepen- 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE AST 


ing condemnation, if they will not suffer it to be for 
their growing salvation (cf. John ix. 39-41). Where 
sin continues the consequences of sin will continue, 
intensified it may be by a more distinct consciousness 
of them as the judgment of God, resulting in a more 
inveterate defiance instead of a penitent submission. 
There may thus be a widening gulf between the 
righteous and the wicked, who in their earthly life 
may not have appeared to be so far apart. Only the 
Christian can look forward to death with assured hope ; 
for the unbelieving it should have a salutary fear. 
Nothing in the revelation of God’s Fatherhood 
warrants an assumption that moral differences and 
their consequences will be obliterated in the unseen 
world, or that men will not there reap the fruit of their 
sowing here, corruption to those who have sowed to 
the flesh, and only to those who have sowed to the 
Spirit eternal life (Gal. vi. 8). 

-~ Secondly, we should prefer the Christian idea of 
resurrection as modified by Paul to the Greek idea of 
the disembodied soul. Necessarily his language 1s 
very figurative : ‘ We know that if the earthly house 
of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building 
from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in 
the heavens’ (2 Cor. v. 1). This he elsewhere de- 
scribes as the spiritual body (1 Cor. xv. 42-49), by 
which he means a body fit for and worthy of the 
renewed spirit of man as its organ of expression and 
activity. Such a conception is not so difficult for 
our thought to-day as 1t was for a former age when 
the rigid atomic theory prevailed. Matter and spirit 
seemed so opposed to one another that a spiritual 
body seemed a contradiction in terms. The hypo- 
thesis of the indestructibility of matter and of the 
transmutation of energy is now under revision. It 
is conceded that energy may be transmuted into 
matter, and matter may be resolved again into energy ; 
and the most intelligible conception we can form of 
energy is energy as we ourselves exercise it when we 
will to act. Life is ever realising energy, and we 
cannot now conceive life without the direction of mind. 


458 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Panpsychism is a philosophy which commends itself 
to many minds. Without laying stress on this possi- 
bility of making more intelligible the spiritual body, 
what the doctrine of the Resurrection stands for as 
permanent truth is that it is the whole personality 
in full activity and manifold relations which survives 
death, not an attenuated, devitalised manhood. While 
physical and social relations of this life will not be 
reproduced, yet the continuity of the entire person- 
ality surely involves that all the human relations 
which have fostered the development of the person- 
ality here will be continued hereafter. The Christian 
hope would lose much of its value for us did it not in- 
clude the expectation ‘that the affections which have 
made life so good here will be continued hereafter. 
Interests and activities which have personal value will 
be carried on in the unseen world, however changed 
may be the conditions. In more intimate communion 
with God al! the children of God will be brought into 
more intimate communion with one another; and just 
as here the common love for all mankind does not ex- 
clude the distinctive love of husband and wife, parent 
and child, friend and friend, so there these differences 
of relationship transformed will not disturb, but con- 
tribute to the vast harmony of the one family of God. 

(6) Can we bring the transformed Apocalyptic hope 
and the view here offered of individual destiny into 
closer relation to one another? Is heaven so severed 
from earth that it has no share in the trial and the 
triumph of the Kingdom of God on earth ? 

(i) Refusing to accept as convincing the evidence 
which spiritualism offers of communications from 
the dead, we do not need to deny their presence with 
us, their interest in us, their activity for us. If Christ 
be as He has proved to be in Christian experience a 
living, loving, and gracious presence, there is no 
ground for denying the possibility at least of such 
a participation of the saints with us as shall be for 
our help and comfort, and shall not disturb their 
blessedness. It need not be that they know all that 
we say and do, so that our sins should be their grief, 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 459 


even though that we cannot deny; it may be that 
their receptivity and responsiveness are determined by 
their character and condition now, so that only what 
is truest, best, and worthiest in human history finds 
access to their loving hearts. It is surely not merely 
a fond fancy, but the heart’s deepest craving, which has 
found expression in this anonymous poem, written 
in imitation of Swinburne’s series of roundels on ‘ A 
Baby’s Death,’ but referring to a beloved wife : 


‘ The tender eyes that looked in love 
On me before, so meekly wise ; 
But from my sight death did remove 
The tender eyes. 
What glories now upon them rise 
Beyond the brightness of these skies ? 
But surely they do earthward move 
To rest on me. Love never dies, 
Which faithful by their ight approve 
The tender eyes. 


‘ The gentle hands that smoothed my brow 
With soothing touch, that loosed the bands 
Which bound my soul, where are they now, 
The gentle hands ? 
As ceaseless working God’s commands, 
With unseen fingers weaving strands 
*T ween earth and heaven. I know not how 
I’m heavenward drawn. Her love demands : 
The mastery I will allow 
The gentle hands. 


‘The willing feet that joyous sped 
To give me help, by love made fleet, 
Are now for ever from me fled, 
The willing feet ? 
Now find they work that is more sweet, 
Gives larger joy, makes bliss complete ? 
Ah, yet I think they sometimes tread 
The room again, and still repeat 
Their former work, by love still led, 
The willing feet.’ 


(ii) Generalising this idea, we may ask, are the saints 
in heaven watching the progress of the Kingdom of 
God onearth? That thought is suggested by Hebrews 
xii. 1, and Westcott adopts it.! ‘ The writer regards 


1 The Epistle to the Hebrews, in loco. 


460 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


himself and his fellow-Christians as placed in an 
arena and contending for a great prize. The image 
of the amphitheatre with the rising rows of spectators 
seems to suggest the thought of an encircling cloud. 
The witnesses of whom the cloud is composed are 
unquestionably the countless heroes of faith whose 
deeds have been summarised in chapter xi.’ There is an 
interest not only of compassion, but their own blessed- 
ness 1s being completed as they see the fulfilment of 
the promise given to them in the better thing God has 
provided for those who follow them (xi. 39-40). We 
may apply the thought to the saints now in heaven, 
and the completion of the world’s redemption in 
Christ. When the Kingdom of God comes in its 
fullness of power and glory, either here on earth, or 
in the unseen world, then will even the saints in heaven 
be perfected. ‘There is joy,’ as Jesus tells us, ‘in 
the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
repenteth’ (Luke xv. 10). Their full blessedness 
surely waits till all the prodigals are gathered home. 
Can Paul who was willing to be ‘ anathema from Christ 
for his brethren’s sake, his kinsmen according to the 
flesh > (Rom. ix. 3) be perfected in glory until ‘ all 
Israel shall be saved’ (xi. 26)? The universal con- 
summation will also be the individual completion for 
the saints; will it also be the final judgment of the 
wicked who still oppose themselves to that fulfilled 
purpose of God? It would be fitting that it should 
so be. Such a solution of the problem has a double 
advantage. It does first of all retain the essential 
content of the Apocalyptic hope of a consummation 
of all things in Christ, and harmonises it with the 
development of Christian thought regarding individual 
destiny. What may be beyond that consummation, 
if we may be so bold as to make a conjecture, is sug- 
gested by 1 Corinthians xv. 28; but the consideration 
of that saying must be deferred for the conclusion of 
this volume. It secondly corrects a too common error 
of popular Christian thought. Individual destiny is 
detached from the universal consummation, and in 
some forms of pietism a man is allowed and encouraged 


THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 461 


to rejoice in his own salvation, while indifferent to 
the damnation of a large portion of mankind. We 
cannot and we ought not to separate ourselves from 
our race; humanity is a body of which the members 
suffer or rejoice together (1 Cor. xi. 26). How could 
one man be completely saved himself in a world 
for the most part damned! How could he rejoice 
in his own salvation, unmoved by compassion for 
his lost brethren! What Christian love does demand 
in the Christian hope is that the consummation shall 
be relatively so complete that the loving heart can be 
satisfied, and find its share in the satisfaction of the — 
heart of God. The grace of Christ shall accomplish 
all that the love of God desires in the redeemed race, 
the community of the Spirit, the temple of God filled 
with His presence. 

(iii) In no department of theology is there a greater 
need of restatement, of abandoning the old paths of 
tradition and authority, and of venturing on new 
ways of moral and religious insight in the light of the 
revelation of God in Jesus Christ.t. This the writer 
has in this chapter ventured to do, impelled thereto 
not only by the interest of the mind in truth, but also 
by the affections of the heart for men, the love which 
the love of God inspires, which craves, and prays, and 
hopes for the salvation of all men. In what has been 
written here no moral or religious interest has been 
sacrificed. Judgment on sin so long as it is impenitent 
has been affirmed as a necessity of the perfection of 
God Himself; but grace unto the uttermost has also 
been asserted, a grace which will not triumph over 
judgment, but may even in judgment secure its 
triumph. Not retribution, but redemption, is God’s 
final purpose, although retribution may serve the 
ends of redemption, and, with sad heart must the 
admission be made, retribution may be final where 
redemption is finally refused. Still do we cling to 
the hope that the victory of grace over sin shall be 
complete, when God shall be all in all. 


1 A recent book which attempts a restatement on similar lines is The Other 
Side of Death, by R. G. Macintyre. 


CONCLUSION : 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY 
FATHER, SON AND HOLY SPIRIT ONE GOD 


In the preceding pages an endeavour has been made 
to expound the Christian Revelation and Redemption 
in its historical trinitarian presentation. We have 
been concerned with what has been described as the 
economic in contrast to the ontological Trinity, with 
God as He has made Himself known and given Himself 
to men in history. We must raise the further ques- 
tion: Is God in His eternal nature as He has revealed 
Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? For any 
‘ ethical monotheism ’ God as He is in Himself must 
be unity, and so we must press the question. Can 
God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be conceived as 
one God? To use Kant’s distinction, is the Trinity 
only phenomenal and the Unity alone noumenal, or 
is the one only historical appearance and the other 
alone eternal reality; or if both are alike noumenal 
and real, how is the Trinity related to the Unity? 
Each of these questions demands an answer, not 
merely to gratify a theological curiosity, but to meet 
the religious need of possessing God Himself as He 
is in Himself. 


{ 


(1) Man in his religion seeks to reach reality, the 
ultimate cause, the essential nature, and the final 
purpose of this Universe. He cannot rest in what 
seems, but only in what is. Even a revelation of 
God which gave man less or other than God Himself 
would mock his need, and blight his hopes. Im- 


perfect as he knows his apprehension to have been, 
462 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY 163 


yet he believes that it is not semblance, but substance, 
that he apprehends. Illusive he may admit some of 
his religious ideas to have been as reality imperfectly 
apprehended, but not delusive as apprehension of 
unreality. As-the man of science is seeking to know 
the world as it is, and yet is ever ready to replace one 
hypothesis which has guided his research so far that 
he discovers its inadequacy, by another hypothesis 
more adequate to what he now knows, so the believer 
is prepared to pass from one conception to another 
because he is confident that he is pressing nearer to 
the inmost shrine of what God is. If God has revealed 
Himself, the believer cannot admit that the revelation 
is concealment, that God makes Himself appear to man 
other than He 7s. That the revelation cannot be 
complete, that he now knows only in part, and sees 
in a mirror darkly (1 Cor. xii. 12, R.V. marg., Gr., in 
a riddle), he admits; but that there is as close corre- 
spondence between what he knows and what God is 
as the difference between God and man allows, he must 
maintain. If God made man for His fellowship and 
likeness, the affinity between God and man is close 
enough to allow man to know God as He is, since God 
has made him capable of such knowledge, and desires 
toimpart itto man. Ifthe relation between God and 
man be as it is realised in Christian experience the 
economic is not a concealment, but a revelation, of the 
ontological trinity. 

(2) Before passing further in our argument we must 
recognise two objections to this claim of religion, 
although the one has been discredited, and the other 
has not yet been generally recognised. 

(i) Agnosticism as an epistemology or theory of 
knowledge maintains that man can know only what 
appears, not what is—phenomena, and not noumena. 
In order to clear the ground for a naturalistic explana- 
tion of the world in his Synthetic Philosophy, which is 
merely a generalisation of the science of the time, 
Herbert Spencer sought to relegate God to the region 
of the Unknown or Unknowable.! It is interesting 

1 First Principles, Part 1. 


464 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


to observe that in his argument he had to rely on 
Hamilton and Mansel, both of whom believed them- 
selves to be abating the proud claims of philosophy in 
the interests of revealed religion. Much of the reason- 
ing is but verbal jugglery. That man’s knowledge 
is relative to man’s capacity to know is a truism ; 
what is false is the assumption that the relation of 
the subject knowing to the object known necessarily 
involves that the object is not, and cannot be, as it is 
known. Agnosticism arbitrarily restricts its scepti- 
cism to the knowledge of God, but if the relativity of 
knowledge forbids our knowing God it no less forbids 
our knowing the world. Science, no less than philo- 
sophy or theology, must be declared invalid on this 
assumption. All human thought on the last questions 
is a protest against this attempt to limit its activity 
to the data of sense, and philosophy no less than 
religion asserts that the world can be made intelligible 
because the intelligence of man is akin to the intelli- 
gence which is its cause and end. 

(ii) Agnosticism is not now the intellectual fashion 
of the hour, and need not detain us any longer. 
What is much more likely to prove a formidable 
opponent is the recent development of psychology. 
(a) Theology had withdrawn from the basis of auth- 
ority of Church and Bible, and was building on the 
foundation of Christian experience. But what remains 
if Christian, even all religious experience be merely 
subjective, due to suggestion (auto- and hetero-)?? 
If people can cure themselves, or be cured by others, 
by being led to believe that they are cured, may not 
prayer be simply auto-suggestion, the answer due not 
to God but the result of the faith of him who prays ? 
If a man can physically invigorate himself by thinking 
that he is strong, may not the enthusiasm and energy 
which the Christian Church ascribes to the Spirit of 
God be self-induced ? These questions involve an 
assumption that is itself false. It is assumed that 
the activity must be either man’s or God’s, and that 
if we can describe the psychical process we have got 

1 Suggestion and Auto-suggestion, by Baudouin. 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY 465 


rid of any cause other than man. But if God be 
immanent, if in God ‘ we live and move and have our 
being’ (Acts xviii. 28), then is there divine activity 
in the psychical process. God no less works because 
He works in us. For its full efficacy the religious 
experience requires the belief in the objectivity of 
God’s working. If a man be fully persuaded that he 
is alone, left to himself, without God, his religious 
experience will lose its power. We are not justified 
in assuming that man involuntarily is practising a 
fraud upon himself in this assumption of objectivity. 
Religion is too deep-rooted and wide-spread a fact 
in human history to be dismissed as a universal 
illusion. If faith in God rested only on individual 
religious experience, and were contradicted by the 
other facts of the world and life, it might be difficult 
for it to hold its own; but the interpretation theistic- 
ally of all that is, is more satisfying to reason and to 
conscience than any other explanation which can be 
offered. The proof of this belongs to Apologetics, 
and not Dogmatics, and thus falls outside of the 
present purpose. When the man conscious of his own 
moral weakness to withstand temptation falls back 
on God, prays for His Spirit, and is made more than 
conqueror, the case of the psychologist would need to 
be much stronger to persuade him that all is due to 
himself.? 

“ (b) The whole subject has been treated very sanely 
by a competent psychologist, Dr. William Kelley 
Wright.? Discussing the relation of the subconscious, 
as recent psychology has been exploring it, to prayer, 
he states :. *‘ Only to a@ certain extent are the psycho- 
logical principles similar, while there 1s a profound 
ethical and moral difference between prayer and. the 
other cases. In every spiritual religion appeal is 
always to a higher and more ideal self. ... The 
prayers of spiritual religion effect moral reinforce- 
ments of character through the action of the Alter, 


! For a Christian interpretation of the conclusions of recent psychology 
see the volume of Essays entitled The Spirit, especially II. 
_ ? A Student’s Philosophy of Religion, pp. 266-7. 
2G 


466 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


such as would be impossible to the same extent 
through any other agency. It follows that in some 
important respects prayer involves unique psycho- 
logical principles. In effecting such a synthesis of 
moral sentiments, prayer psychologically has a different 
function from other means of tapping subconscious 
energy. The influx of energy due to prayer effects 
a more extensive and permanent co-ordination of 
springs to action. ...’ ‘We shall have to admit a 
measure of truth and moral worth in all religions, and 
that prayer is answered in them all. But as humanity 
has advanced, we have found that its conception of 
God has advanced also. { All religions contain some 
‘measure of goodness “and truth; but those religions 
that make effective the ethically best and logically most 
rationally conceived Alter are best and truest.’ Chris- 
tianity stands the test as the truest of all the religions 
in tworespects. First of all, its conception of God, the 
‘ethical monotheism’ of the Hebrew prophets com- 
pleted in the revelation of God as Father by Christ as 
Son, answers the questions of the reason, meets the 
demands of the conscience, and satisfies the longings 
of the heart as no other conception can, This is a 
legitimate application of the pragmatic test, what_s 
lrue_works. Secondly, the experience of the Christian 
of the presence and power of God by His Spirit makes 
that revelation of God effective in the transformation 
of human personality, so that the creature becomes 
the child of God, the sinner the saint. Christian 
faith receives and responds to reality as truth— 
the revelation of the Father in the Son; and as 
erace—the transformation of man so that he lives 
with God, and God in Him, and grows in like- 
ness to God. Thus it works practically as well as 
theoretically. 

(3) Having asserted the objectivity of Christian faith 
—its contact with reality—-we must now consider its 
progressiveness. 

(i) The New Testament does not confront us with 
the Athanasian Creed as a condition of salvation. 
The disciples were only gradually led to confess Jesus 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY — 467 


as the Christ (the Messiah). Even if the words * the 
son of the living God ’ were added (Matt. xvi. 16) they 
must be understood in a Messianic sense. Jesus did 
claim to be the Son alone known by and knowing the 
Father, and alone able to reveal the Father to men 
(xi. 27), but the full significance of the saying does not 
appear to have been apprehended during the earthly 
life. After the Resurrection the official title Christ 
passed into a personal name, and the title Lord was 
added. The Christology of the early chapters in Acts 
has been described as Adoptionist.t. It was Paul and 
the author of the Fourth Gospel who without going 
beyond the implications of Christian faith so developed 
them as to give us a Christology in which Jesus the 
Christ the Lord, without departing from the human 
region, is exalted into the divine. Christian faith has 
confirmed that exaltation as inevitable.” What Christ 
means and is worth for man in his relation to God 
demands the confession that He is God as man. The 
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is identical with the 
love of God as its manifestation in human history. 
Similarly the inward and outward change wrought 
in believers could not be otherwise explained than as 
the work of God Himself. Accordingly, the love of 
God, identical with and manifest in the grace of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, was realised in the life of the be- 
liever in the Koinonia, the common possession or the 
community of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. xii. 14).~ Here 
we are concerned, not with speculative theology, but 
with personal experience. The present and potent 
reality of God is apprehended in the Holy Spirit 
within Christian life, as the reality of God’s Father- 
hood was apprehended in the Sonship and Saviour- 
hood of Jesus Christ. It is the one God whois Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit. 

(ii) The problem of theology is how to recognise 
adequately these differences, and yet preserve abso- 
lutely the unity. In dealing with the Dogmatic 
Formulation regarding the Person of Christ (Section J, 


The ae of the Apostles,’ by H.'T. Andrews, Westminster New Testa- 
ment, p. = 


468 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Chapter IV), the inadequacy of the philosophical 
categories used in the creeds has been discussed ; as 
the treatment of the doctrine of the Spirit followed on 
the same lines (Section III, Chapter I), the same 
criticism applies there. The categories of substance 
and subsistence, nature and person are the best the 
thought of the time could offer, but can be only mis- 
leading for us and hinder our reaching the truth. 
We do not desire to affirm the divinity of Christ or 
the reality of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 
less than the framers of the creeds, but we want to 
do this even more positively and intelligibly, less 
ambiguously and mysteriously. To take one illus- 
tration, Athanasius was right when he insisted on the 
homoousion to assert the unity of Christ with God, 
the Cappadocian fathers wrong when they allowed the 
term to be used with a tendency to tritheism. Much 
of the popular religious speech to-day, even in the 
pulpit, is tritheistic. There is a divine class to which 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit belong, not a divine 
personal unity existing and manifested as Father, 
/ Son, and Holy Spirit. The task for constructive 
theology to-day is to récover the unity while not 
_ losing the reality of the differences within God which 
. these descriptive historical terms express.) What we 
“have to do is to show how we can apprehend Christ 
as God, and the Holy Spirit as God, indicating the 
reasons for which the Church hitherto has often failed 
in this apprehension. 

(111) The failure of the creeds is due to the fact that 
while affirming the divinity of Christ they retain a 
conception of God inconsistent with, and even con- 
tradictory of, what Christ shows God to be. (a) 
Theologians who, like the Chalcedonian, regarded it as 
_a ‘monstrous doctrine’ to teach that ‘the divine nature 
of the Only Begotten is passible,’ and in general 
emphasised after the manner of Greek philosophy 
the differences of the divine and the human nature, 
apart from the inadequacy of their categories, were 
quite incapable of thinking intelligently on the In- 
carnation. It is Christ’s own consciousness of God as 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY 469 


lather which we must fully accept if we are to under- 
stand the reality of His Sonship, His unity with God. 
Not only has Greek philosophy intruded into Christian 
theology, but Old Testament ideas being accepted as 
authoritative have prevented a conception of God 


distinctively and consistently Christian. If God be | 


conceived as love, the Incarnation ceases to be a 
mystery, as piety has often felt it to be, or a puzzle, 
as theology has sometimes done its worst to make it; 
it becomes a necessity. Love must give itself and 
find itself in the giving. It is God who gives Himself 
and finds Himself as man in Christ, not an inferior 
deity, or a being partly divine; and the humanity, 
so far from being a limitation of the divinity, is the 
very condition of God’s most fully giving and finding 
Himself. There are three implications in this state- 
ment which must be made more explicit. They have 


already been dealt with more fully, but must here be | 


repeated (Section I, Chapter VI). In the first place, 
God must be personal, and personality in God and 


man must have so close an affinity that the personal | 
God can live, suffer, and act as personal man. Hi | 


God’s nature be other than personal, then the Incar- 
nation is inconceivable. In the second place, as 
personal, human experience must have reality for God, 
else how could God share it, as He did in Christ? 
That means that human development in time must 
be real for God. If God’s eternity means that time 
for Him is only appearance, and not reality, God 
cannot have been really in Christ as He lived, suffered, 
and acted on earth. Or’ widening our vision, and 
recalling that the Incarnation is the consummation 
of a progressive divine revelation, we may argue that 
cosmic evolution and human history must have reality 
for God. God was coming into His world in full 
expression of His character and purpose, and finally 
came in Jesus Christ; God was so immediately in 
Christ that Christ’s experience belongs to the very 
reality of God Himself.» This and nothing less is 
what the divine immanence must mean, if it be an 
immanence of love. God might be in the world as 


470 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


wisdom, power, and goodness, and yet not so fully 
identify Himself with the life of man; but love means 
self-identification. While in the human development 
the Son distinguished Himself from the Father, 
depended on Him, held communion with Him, sub- 
mitted to Him, yet God as Son was in the human 
experience, and, in the intimacy of the relation of 
Father and Son, God as Father shared that experience. 
Thirdly, there must be in God eternally the capacity 
for such self-limitation of His infinitude and absolute- 
ness as makes such a personal immanence in human 
personality possible and actual; and as it is the selt- 
limitation of love it is also self-realisation, for love's 
kenosis is also love’s plerosis, to use a couple of terms 
that it would be well to give a permanent place mn 
our theological vocabulary. Shall we venture to say 
that this kenosis for plerosis of God is the Son, as 
God in His infinitude and absoluteness is the Father ; 
but as in the historical revelation in the consciousness 
of Christ the Son always knew Himself one with the 
Father, so the transcendence and the immanence of 
God, His infinitude and absoluteness on the one side 
and His kenosis and plerosis on the other, are In- 
separably related, for infinitude means not unlimited- 
ness, but self-limitation, and absoluteness does not 
mean unrelatedness, but self-relating? The writer is 
persuaded from his own experience that we can 
apprehend the reality of God in Christ, the unity of 
the Father and the Son, as we cease thinking of God 
in any other ways than we learn from Christ. As we 
know God as Father in Christ as Son will the Incar- 
nation become to us luminous; if at times we feel 
dazzled, it is only by the excess of light that shines 
from that fact upon our darkness.” We believe that 
Christ is God not because He mysteriously possessed 
a divine nature united to a human, but because as He 
is as man we find God in Him, and God finds us 
through Him. We behold the glory of the Only 
Begotten of the Father in the Word incarnate, and 
find Him full of grace and truth (John i. 14), God 
making Himself known and even giving Himself in 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY 471 


love to us. This and nothing less is what believing _ 


in the divinity of Christ means. 

_“ (b) How shall we apprehend the reality of God in 
the Holy Spirit? This apprehension is even more 
hindered than is the apprehension of God in Christ, 
both practically and theoretically. We must live 
the life of the Spirit, if we are to know God in the 
Spirit. It is in no way uncharitable to say that the 
religion of the Christian Church as a whole is not life 
in the Spirit; it is largely second-hand tradition and 
custom, and not first-hand experience. It may pos- 
sibly be that there are many men under their present 
conditions incapable of that experience, and, there- 
fore, necessarily dependent on the mediation of the 
doctrine and the ordinances of the Christian Church 
as an organisation visible and active in the world. 
What, however, is certain is that typical Christian 
life, which we should aspire and strive for, is a life 
in which Pentecost is not a tale of long ago, but a 
present fact. Without desiring any of the abnormal 
spiritual gifts, to which Paul with his characteristic 
wisdom assigned a secondary value, we should desire 


the holy enthusiasm and the holy energy of the’ 
Apostolic Church in its best representatives. Such 


a freedom from sin, such a fullness of holiness, such a 
certainty of truth, such a power for service, such a 
confidence of hope may come to the believer, who 
fulfils the conditions of dependence and submission, 
that he will know assuredly that this is not his achieve- 
ment, that it is God’s bestowal, that he is not drawing 
on the limited resources of his own personality, but 
on the inexhaustible resources of God Himself. As 
we must become more Christian in thought to appre- 
hend God in Christ, so we must live more spiritually to 
apprehend God as Spirit. 

This life in the Spirit of God distinguishes itself 
from much which goes by the name of mysticism in 
four respects. Furst, it is objective. God is not sought 
and found in the depths of human personality. It is 
as faith receives and responds to the truth and grace 
of the Lord Jesus Christ that there is the experience 


pee eT 


ee 


472 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


of the presence and power of the Spirit. Pentecost 
followed on the certainty of the resurrection of Christ 
the Lord. The distinctively Christian experience of 
the Spirit of God depends on the historical revelation 
and redemption. Second, it is normal. The visions 
and voices, the raptures and trances of which much has 
sometimes been made as evidence of contact with God 
are not necessary to him who sees the Father in the 
Son, and is saved from sin by the Son. Third, it is 
practical. It does not mean withdrawal from the 
world for study and meditation, for any artificial 
process of getting nearer to God than the common 
life of man affords. It.is amid the daily business, in 
the common duties of life, the service of the Kingdom, 
that the fruit of the Spirit is seen. Where love is as 
the motive and principle of life, there is the Spirit of 
God who is love. Accordingly, fourth, it is social: the 
Spirit as the common possession of believers makes 
them a community, a body of many members with 
diverse functions according to the diversity of the 
cifts of the Spirit. On this last feature is it specially 
necessary to dwell, for it is the absence of the desire 
for and the effort after unity which is one of the main 
causes of the Church’s failure to continue Pentecost in 
its experience. The duty of Christian reunion need 
not be based as exclusively as it often is on the prayer 
in John xvii. 22-23, for unity is of the very essence 
of the Church as the body of Christ, and the realisation 
in thought, feeling, and deed of that unity, the con- 
dition of the possession in fullness of the Spirit who 
gives life to that body. If God be by His very nature 
love, if His Spirit be the Spirit of community, the 
divisions among the churches are hindering the com- 
pletion of the revelation of God in His Spirit. The 
differences in creed, ritual, and polity which have 
emerged in history, and which many Christians regard 
it as a matter of conscience to preserve, would never 
have come to be regarded as important enough in 
themselves to destroy the manifest unity, unless there 
had been a failure to realise in experience the presence 
and power of the Spirit as the common possession. 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY AT3 


A Church possessed by the Spirit would be a Church 
in which the sense of unity would transcend and 
transform differences. As the churches realise the 
unity of the Church, will they also apprehend the 
reality of God in His Spirit. As long as the differences 
dominate Christian thought and life, so long will the 
experience of the Spirit fall short of the certainty that 
God, God Himself in His very life of love, is dwelling 
and working in man.~ The Spirit’s incarnation in 
the body of Christ, the Church, continues and com- 
pletes the incarnation of the Son, and the revelation 
of the Father in the Son, and that incarnation is not 
yet completed since individually and_ collectively 
Christians are not fully living the life in the Spirit. 

(4) When we have thus apprehended the reality of 
God as Father, Son, and Spirit in unity, the Father 
revealed in the Son, and as so revealed realised in 
human experience in the Spirit, then surely we are 
entitled to draw the inference that as God is so known 
to us He is and must needs be in Himself. So absolute 
is the value of this revelation of the love which gives 
itself as ight to illumine and as life to inspire man, 
that we cannot conceive God as other than this. Not 
only may we infer from the fact of revelation that 
there is not concealment of what God is, but from the 
content of the revelation that it is inconceivable that 
God can be other in His reality than He is revealed. 
We may then confidently pass from the economic to 
the ontological Trinity, and dare to make the attempt 
at least to conceive what God in Himself is. 


II 


(1) While our conception of God must ever be 
dependent on the revelation which has been given us, 
we do want to make that conception as luminous to 
our minds as we can make it. Many attempts have 
been made to give a rational demonstration of the 
necessity of the doctrine of the Trinity for our 
thought. 


474 THK CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(i) In our consciousness there is the duality of sub- 
ject and object within the unity, the self who thinks, 
feels, wills, and what is thought, felt, and willed as the 
content of our consciousness. We cannot think of 
God as personal, without so thinking of His conscious- 
ness. ‘To us most of the object is, as it were, given 
by the world, of which we are a part, though a part 
conscious of it as a whole. But unless there is an 
eternal world as the object for the eternal God as the 
subject, God must within His own consciousness be 
both subject and object. As we realise our person- 
ality in ‘ self-knowledge, self-reverence, and _ self- 
control’ we do become less dependent on the world 
around, and the self gives itself a growing content, and 
so constitutes its own content as object ; our memory 
of the past, our purpose for the future, our religious 
ideas and moral ideals become an inner world objective 
to ourselves. We may then conceive God as subject 
and object in the unity of His own consciousness, not 
in a temporal realisation, but as eternal reality. To 
many minds this will seem an abstraction of thought, 
very unconvincing to the religious consciousness. Ithas 
its value, however, as warding off the objection that the 
conception of God as difference-in-unity is irrational. 

(11) Another line of argument depends on the relation 
of God’s immanence and God’s transcendence. God 
is in all and through all, and yet also above all. He 
creates in time and space, but Himself is immense 
and eternal. His will is in the natural forces in a 
finite form, and His mind also in natural laws; yet 
He is Himself infinite. But we must not think God 
as divided in His transcendence and immanence, for 
the difference is within the unity of His nature. 
Hegel’s statement of the doctrine of the Trinity ! 
may here be mentioned. God in Himself as tran- 
scendent is the Father; God as going out of Himself 
as immanent is the Son; God as returning to Himself 
in the unity of transcendence and immanence is the 
Spirit. That too is a mode of thinking which will 
appeal only to a few minds. 

| 1 Eneykl., § 566. 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY AT 


(ii) Augustine finds an analogy to the Trinity in 
the human consciousness. ‘ Dico haec tria: esse, 
nosse, velle. Sum enim et novi, et volo; sum sciens 
et volens; et scio esse me, et velle; et volo esse, et 
scire. In his igitur tribus quam sit inseparabilis vita, 
et una vita, et una mens, et una essentia quam 
denique inseparabilis distinctio, et tamen distinctio 
videat qui potest.?' This analogy does show that 
if we are to conceive God as personal, we must con- 
ceive Him as having difference-in-unity, but would 
quite exclude the conception of three persons within 
that unity in the common acceptation of the term 
person to-day. It does fall short, however, in ade- 
quately indicating the differences which the revelation 
of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does suggest, 
and the original use of the term person tried to 
convey. 

(iv) Much more attractive as well as helpful to our 
thought is the analogy from love which Augustine * 
also offers, amans, amatus, and mutuus amor. In 
love there must be the loving and the loved in mutual 
relation, and in that relation the difference is not 
submerged, but harmonised in the unity of a common 
life. Is amor mutuus a fuller reality than the amans 
and the amatus each by himself would be? If so, this 
would be more than a human analogy of God as Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit, since God is love. Does the 
love of Father and Son issue in the fullness of the life 
of the Spirit, the common life more than the sum of 
the life of each apart would be? The separation 
which the incarnation of human personality involves 
may make it difficult for us to conceive the common 
life as having the same degree of reality as each of 
the lives so made one in love. Father and Son must’ 
be thought as different enough to be subject and object 
of love in the unity of the divine consciousness, and 
yet not so separate as to appear as two individuals | 
in a society. 

(v) Accordingly, the orthodox terminology must be 
dismissed, as not only not helpful, but even a hindrance 


1 Confessio, xiii. 11. * De Trinitate, xiv. and xv. 


476 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


to any intelligible conception. One substance may 
mean one entity, but it is a static conception, and 
suggests no difference-in-unity. It carries our thought 
no further, as does the conception of God as personal, 
giving and finding Himself as love. The conception 
of God as personal may then offer some aid to our 
mind in thinking Him as triune. But if we make 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each a person, we must, 
to conceive each separately, repeat this differentiation 
of subject and object in the unity of consciousness, 
and so on endlessly. The framers of the creeds never 
did intend person to be understood as individual, as 
it has come to be regarded in popular religious thought, 
and to-day by retaining their term with the meaning 
now imported into it we do not honour but defeat 


their intention. God is personal unity as Father, 


Son, and Holy Spirit; but to express these differences, 
since we should not use the term person, we have 
not yet found a term of general acceptance. 

(2) The creeds approach the theological problem 
from the side of metaphysics: we may approach it 
from the side of psychology and sociology, and may 
find the categories we thus reach more adequate to 
make the doctrine of the Trinity more intelligible. 

(1) In the First Section, Chapter VI, the modern 
conception of personality has been applied to the 
doctrine of the Incarnation. There is one aspect of 
that conception which may prove helpful to us in 
dealing with the doctrine of the Trinity. The mech- 
anical mode of thought, dealing with reality as a 
whole made up of parts, was responsible for an 
inadequate conception. Human personality was 
divided into faculties, and there was a dispute early 
last century as to whether three or four faculties 
Should be recognised. Was the person made up of 
thought, feeling, will, or must desire be added as 
intermediate between feeling and will? It was on 
the false assumption that will was a separate faculty 
that the dispute between determinism and indeter- 
minism rested. It was because it was taken for 
granted that thought and feeling could be separated 


Oe oe 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY 477 


that the popular contrast was made between the 
religion of the head and of the heart. Now we 
recognise that personality is a unity, thinking, feeling, 
and willing, and that there is no state of consciousness 
which is entirely one of the three apart altogether 
from the other two. There is a trinity in unity, or 
a tri-unity. But this illustration, while preserving 
the unity, does not seem adequately to recognise the 
differences in the Godhead. We must go further in 
our analysis. The mechanical way of looking at 
reality also affected the conception of the relation of 
one person to another; each was complete as a unit 
in itself, and relations were external. Rousseau’s 
doctrine of the social contract and Hobbes’ account 
of the origin of government illustrate this phase of 
thought. In the battle-cry of the French Revolution, 
liberty and equality were the ruling conceptions, and 
what fraternity involved as regards man’s relation 
to society was not adequately recognised. Herbert 
Spencer, while recognising the analogy between society 
and a body, stopped short at a physical interdepend- 
ence, and in his denial of the common consciousness 
relapsed to this individualism in his contention that 
individual happiness must be the guide for social 
action. But, defective as was his exposition, it did 
assert the interdependence of individuals in a society. 
When we compare society to an organism, however 
imperfectly, the mechanical view of man as individual 
unit is abandoned, and we begin to think of him as 
complete only within the unity of society. We are 
learning that the individual is an abstraction of 
thought, as personality is realised only in social 
relations, and the more completely the more varied 
the relations are. Man as son, brother, husband, 
father, worker, citizen develops his own personality 
as apart from such relations it could not be developed. 
If love be, as Christianity holds, the religious and 
mori! principle of conduct and character, we may 
assert that personality is by its very nature social. 
(ii) We may now approach the subject from the 


1 Principles of Sociology, 1. 475 ff. 


478 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


side of sociology. It has already been necessary to 
refer to the displacement of the mechanical by the 
organic view. Mackenzie in his Introduction to Social 
Philosophy had already advanced beyond Spencer in 
that, while still using the conception of organism, he 
moved from the biological to the psychological stand- 
point in insisting that rational personality needs and 
seeks to create a rational environment.! M(‘Iver in 
his book on Community offers us a much more adequate 
conception. Men by their very nature have a com- 
munity of interests which lead to co-operation in 
action; accordingly, they gather together in associa- 
tions, and form institutions, or permanent modes of 
co-operation, to realise the community of their interests. 
The society has not a nervous system or a brain, but 
in the consciousness of each member of the society 
there is realised in greater or lesser degree this com- 
munity. The members of the body know themselves 
as members and suffer or rejoice together. The in- 
dividual becomes most himself as he realises in himself 
this community with others. The wider the range 
of interests in which this community is recognised, 
and the higher the quality of the interests, the more 
fully is the personality of each member completed i in 
the society. As the community gains in distinctively 
personal content—art, literature, science, morals, 
religion—does it become a varied yet harmonised 
unity. Thus we may say that a society tends to 
become personal in its unity, to acquire personality. 
Personality is social and society is personal as the 
two develop together. 

(8) There is thus seen to be a convergence of the 
two conceptions of personality as social and society 
as personal. 

(1) If we apply these conceptions to the doctrine of 
the Trinity, the first may help us to conceive the 
unity-in-differences, and the second the differences- 
in-unity. We get the counterpart of the one sub- 
stance of the creeds in social personality, and of the 
three persons in society as personal (as community). 

1 Op. cit., p. 180. 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY 479 


In the one case unity is completed in differences, in 
the other differences are completed in unity. As 
applied to God each of these conceptions must be 
raised to the height of perfection, God perfectly 
social in His personal activity, and God perfectly 
personal in His social relations, God perfect person- 
ality and society in Himself, and the one because of 
the other. Because human personality and human 
society are both so imperfect, the two conceptions 
for us still he apart; but even we in an ideal can 
observe their convergence, and they meet in the 
perfection of God. It is the Christian life in its 
distinctiveness as individual and collective in which 
both ideals should find their realisation. As the 
individual Christian loves others, he gives his life to 
them, and finds his life in them, and his personality 
becomes increasingly social. As in the Christian 
Church the community of the Spirit is realised in the 
virtues and graces, the society will become more 
personal, with a unity and a continuity of life which 
raise it above all atomic individualism, and give it a 
common aspiration, purpose, and activity. The 
Christian is perfected in his unity in the Spirit with 
all other believers; and the Church is perfected into 
unity through the fullness of its personal life. To 
speak of the Church personally as the community of 
the Spirit is more than mere poetic personification. 
As the Christian perfects himself in love, and as the 
Church has a universal destiny and obligation, the 
ideal can be realised only as all men become one in 
love, and the Church becomes the society which 
embraces all mankind. The revelation of God as 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can be completed only 
as humanity is redeemed to be the temple of God, 
filled with His Spirit; and until that consummation 
we shall not realise in experience so as to be lumin- 
ous to our thought the ideal of social personality 
and personal society, the two converging con- 
ceptions which are leading our thought into the 
holy of holies—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as one 
God. 


480 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


(11) In the economic trinity or trinity of revelation 
the Father is mediated to us by the Son in His his- 
torical personality, and the Father-in-the-Son through 
the Holy Spirit in personal experience. What we 
primarily apprehend is difference, although the effort 
has been made to show how we may reach the con- 
viction of the unity of the Father with the Son, and 
of both with the Spirit. Two statements of Paul’s 
seem to carry our thought beyond the stage of media- 
tion to a stage of immediacy. ‘ Now a mediator,’ 
says Paul, ‘is not a mediator of one, but God is one’ 
(Gal. i. 20). Does mediation so obtrude difference 
as to obscure unity ?- Is that the reason why many 
Christians substitute Christ for God, and do not 
always rise through the Son to the Father? In one 
of his boldest flights of thought Paul seems to expect an 
end to the mediation of Christ Himself. ‘ And when all 
things have been subjected unto Him, then shall the 
Son also Himself be subjected to Him that did subject 
all things unto Him, that God may be all in all’ 
(mavra ev maow, 1 Cor. xv. 28). Christ in His 
mediatorial sovereignty is fulfilling all in all in order 
that God may be all in all, perfect personality in 
perfect society, qualitative and quantitative com- 
pleteness. What does this speculation mean? We 
cannot be sure that we can recapture the vision that 
glowed in the mind of Paul of that final glory. What 
can it mean to us? It can lead us a little further 
along the path we are now treading. In the historical 
revelation (the economic trinity) the difference is more 
prominent than the unity. In the eternal revelation, 
which will consummate the historical, the unity will 
be dominant. There will not be absorption in a 
unity without any difference, but a unity in which 
all differences will at last be so harmonised as to make 
the unity perfect. The beatific vision will be a vision 
of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as one God; the 
blessed communion will be not absorption, but the 
realisation of the whole manhood (zdvra) of all man- 
kind (waow) as the one redeemed and _ perfected 
family of God. While we still walk amid the shadows, 


THROUGH FAITH TO REALITY 481 


and wage the warfare of the Kingdom on earth, we 
can thus get glimpses of the coming glory and victory. 
To this reality faith in the fact of Jesus Christ our 
Lord leads us, for He and He alone brings God as 
Father to us, and us as children to God. 


POSTSCRIPT 


As the writer looks back upon the path along which 
he has led the reader, the conviction with which he 
began is deepened, that however far short he may 
have himself fallen in carrying out his own intentions, 
and however defective his work may appear to others, 
yet the principle and the method have been vindicated. 
Theology is not concerned with the world and man 
(cosmology, anthropology, etc.) unless as related to 
God; Christian theology is concerned only with God 
as revealed in Christ; God is revealed in Christ as 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and consequently no 
theology can be adequately and distinctively Christian 
that does not make this conception of God dominant ; 
this trinitarian conception as presented in the New 
Testament is not a perplexity for the intellect, nor a 
burden on the conscience, as it is made in the Athan- 
asian Creed, but a blessing to the soul. The Christian 
Creed, the Apostolic Benediction, interpreted not 
through an alien philosophy, but by the Christian 
history and by the Christian experience, is fitted 
to inspire aspiration, adoration, and consecration. 
* Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive 
the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and 
honour, and glory, and blessing. . . . Unto Him 
that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be 
the blessing, and the honour, and the glory, and the 
dominion, for ever and ever. And the four living 
creatures said, Amen. And the elders fell down and 
worshipped ’ (Rev. v. 12-14). 





ss rr ST 


INDEX 
(2) GENERAL 


AsAnarD, 161-164, 175, 208. 

Abbot, 277. 

Acceptilation, 164, 168, 171. 

Acts, 28. 

Adam, 150, 154, 164, 
301, 304, 310. 

Admonitio Christiana, 143. 

Adoption, 227. 

Adoptionist, 467. 

Affection, 308, 453, 458. 

Agnosticism, 463. 

Alexander, 39. 

Alexandria, 124, 366. 

Altruism, 279, 289. 

Ambrose, 140, 155. 

Andrews, 467. 

Angelology, 96, 153. 

Animatism, 346. 

Animism, 38, 154, 318, 346. 

Anselm, 155-164, 170, 206. 

Anthropology, 8, 244, 255, 258, 482. 

Anthropomorphism, 286. 

Apocalypse of Baruch, 303. 

Apocalyptic, 8, 60, 228, 440, 442, 
445, 458. 

Apocrypha, 300. 

Apollinaris, 124, 128, 133. 

Apologists, 365, 367. 

Apostles’ Creed, 123, 129, 233. 

Aquinas, 144, 163. 

Archaeology, 3 

Aristotle, 184. 

Arius, 118, 123, 129, 130, 143, 365. 

Arminianism, 170, 236, 368, 432. 

Arnold (M.), 70, 322 

Art, 320. 

Athanasian Creed, 126, 131, 133, 135, 
367, 368, 466. 

Athanasius, 118, 127, 130, 135, 365, 
468. 

Atonement, 85, 102, 108, 120, 150, 
151, 156, 161, 169, 184, 218, 230, 
334, 3538, 369. 

Augustine, 68, 94, 127, 155, 236, 
267, 305, 315, 367, 433, 475. 

Authority, 384. 


258, 262, 300, 





| 


| Batrour, 321. 


Baptism, 305, 376, 395, 399. 

Bartlet, 352, 354. 

Basil, 366. 

Baudouin, 71, 464. 

Beauty, 275, 486. 

Bengel, 304. 

Bergson, 189. 

Berkeley, 280. 

Bernard (8.), 155. 

Bernard, 358. 

Bethune-Baker, 134. 

Bible. See Scriptures. 

Biology, 244, 248, 306, 455. 

Bishop, 402. 

Bondage, 265. 

Blessedness, 275, 436, 464. 

Blood, 106. 

Body, 444. 

Booth (M.), 12. 

Brentz, 139. 

Brooks (P.), 391. 

Browning, 325, 337. 

Bruce, 19, 124, 136, 144, 146, 147, 
168, 173, 196. 

Brihl, 260, 

Buddhism, 8, 52, 57, 270, 390, 488. 

Burkitt, 29. 

Burney, 30. 


Carrp (E.), 266. 

Calvary, 84, 103, 119, 180, 179, 199, 
204, 218, 294, 420. 

Calvinism, 137, 146, 167, 170, 195, 
236, 305, 368, 382, 407. 

Cameron (John), 369. 

Campbell (M‘L.), 174, 176, 178, 179, 
208, 210. 

Campbell (R. J.), 15. 

Cappadocian Fathers, 366, 468. 

Carlstadt, 368. 

Catholic, 122, 136, 384, 385, 390, 
396, 406. 

Causality, 266. 

Cave, 8, 270. 

483 


484 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Chalcedon Creed, 124, 1381, 133, 1438, 


185, 228, 468. 

Character, 197, 266, 277, 308, 332, 
356, 401. 

Characters, acquired, 262. 

Charles, 303. 

Chemnitz, 139. 

Child, 306. 

Christ— 

Ascension, 90, 139. 

Authority, 41, 59, 224, 232. 

Baptism, 349. 

Character, 45-50. 

Descent into Hades, 129, 168, 
450. 

Divinity, 31, 43, 143. 

Exaltation, 138, 144, 176, 381. 

Example, 68. 

Faith, 53. 

Foresight, 39. 

Generation, 131, 366. 

Humanity, 32, 143. 

Humiliation, 133, 141, 144. 

Humility, 50. 

Identification, 178, 205. 

Ignorance, 37, 67, 442. 

Insight, 39. 

Intercession, 162, 163, 171. 

Kingship, 143, 176. 

Knowledge, 41, 115. 

Lordship, 97. 

Mediation, 57, 118, 143, 168, 226, 
362. 

Merit, 157. 

Messiahship, 33, 44, 77, 88-95, 
101, 105, 350, 358, 363, 441, 
449, 467. 

Miracles, 43, 45, 69, 77, 155, 222. 

Originality, 60. 

Person, 31, 130, 135, 150. 

Prayers, 76. 

Pre-existence, 43, 56, 100, 114, 
195. 

Priesthood, 143, 176. 

Prophethood, 143, 176. 

Resurrection, 87, 352, 356, 371, 
442. 

Righteousness, 162, 167. 

Sacrifice, 31, 57, 150, 172, 180, 
195, 203, 205, 207, 212, 217, 334. 

Saviourhood, 33, 77. 

Second Advent, 67, 92, 129, 383, 
449, 

Sinlessness, 35, 47, 205, 208. 

Sonship, 20, 36, 54, 206. 

Subordination, 98. 

Sympathy, 171, 172. 

Teaching, 59, 77, 217. 








Christ—continued. 
Temptation, 33, 77, 102, 119, 120, 
349. 
Transfiguration, 82, 88. 
Virgin-birth, 48, 46, 101, 129. 
Church, 90, 114, 139, 178, 178, 182, 
342, 355, 375. 
Citizenship, 425. 


| Clement (Alexandria), 365. 
| Clement (Rome), 364. 
| Communicatio, 138, 141, 146. 


Community, 279, 478. 
Comparison, 7. 

Competition, 425. 

Comte, 321. 

Condignity, 164. 

Conduct, 266, 277, 311. 
Confession, 175, 208, 421. 
Confirmations, 397, 402. 
Confucianism, 8, 60, 390, 438. 
Congruity, 164. 


| Conscience, 11, 46, 152, 179, 197, 


199, 204, 230, 
250, 259, 273, 
323, 328, 331, 
421, 453. 

Conservation, 246, 249, 272, 385. 

Constantinople, 124, 267, 366, 367. 

Consubstantiation, 137, 397. 

Continuity, 259. 

Conversion, 198, 266, 369, 396, 418, 
415, 427. 

Co-operation, 425. 

Copec, 407, 425. 

Correlation, 7. 

Cosmology, 244, 482. 

Courage, 421-423. 

Covenant, 82, 238, 304, 305, 310, 
385. 

Cox, 452. 

Creatian Theory, 267, 271. 

Creation, 15, 189, 190, 195, 226, 
244, 245, 246, 272, 277, 288, 
291, 308. 

Creeds, 24, 122, 129, 342, 368, 468, 
476. 

Crime, 196, 297. 

Criticism, 4, 21. 

Cruelty, 288. 

Curse, 165. 

Custom, 279. 

Cyprian, 402. 

Cyril (Alexandria), 128, 135. 

Cyril (Jerusalem), 366. 


232, 
276, 
332, 


238, 
319, 
350, 


245, 
322, 
390, 


Daimon, 323. 
Dale, 21. 
Darwin, 257, 260, 262, 283. 





a See eee l—Eeeee eee Ce 


INDEX 


Deacon, 402. | 

Death, 108, 175, 199, 204, 281, 283, | 
289, 292, 293, 449, 456. 

Deism, 14, 184, 186, 251. 

Deissmann, 358. 

Demonic possession, 38. 

Demonology, 153, 154. 

Denney, 152, 159, 160, 
168 0724 277, 184; 
342, 360, 369. 

Determinism, 265, 476. 

Development, 255, 2638, 
308, 309, 427. 

Devil, 108, 153-5, 301. 

Didache, 364. 

Discipline, 388, 400. 

Disease, 38, 292, 303. 

Dods, 4, 6, 56. 

Dorner, 124. 

Dort, 368. 

Drummond, 279, 287. 

Dualism, 169, 184, 247. 

Duns Scotus, 164-8. 

Dynamism, 345. 

Dyotheletism, 125. 


162, 165, 
199, 209, 


Ecclesia, 375. 

Economic (Trinity), 370, 462. 

Economics, 279. 

Kestasy, 355. 

Edgehill, 10. 

Education, 268, 308. 

Edwards, (J.), 171, 178, 174. 

Elder, 402. 

Election, 237, 240, 369. 

Ellicott, 153. 

Energy, 4381. 

Enhypostasis, 194. 

Enoch (Similitudes), 79. 

Enthusiasm, 4380. 

Environment, 46, 52, 260, 261, 263, | 
292, 307, 309, 395. 

Epigenesis, 191. 

Episcopate, 384, 386. 

Equality, 423. 

Erskine, 452. ‘ 

Eschatology, 65, 114, 177, 408, 4388. 

Eternal life, 225, 457. 

Ethics, 356, 421. 

Eucharist, 136, 137, 391, 395. 

Eucken, 12. 

Eusebius (C.), 123. 

Eutyches, 125, 128, 138, 138, 146, 
185. 

Evangelical revival, 431. 

Evangelical type, 391. 


294, 306, | 








Evil, 285. 
Evolution, 15, 184, 189, 214, 233, 


A85 

248, 256, 283, 308, 318, 385, 
447. 

Experience, 20, 109, 173, 
236, 293, 329, 332, 
372, 401, 421, 471. 

Ezekiel, 305, 379, 439. 


202, 205, 


352, 362, 


Fact, 9, 18, 16, 91, 129, 182, 186, 
214, 245, 330, 369. 

Fairbairn, 258, 289, 295. 

Faith, 11, 12, 35, 47, 53, 62, 95, 
129, 174, 180, 182, 186, 203, 
208, 223, 230, 232, 384, 355, 
358, 373, 378, 396, 447, 4538. 

Fall, 299-302, 310. 


| Family, 424. 
| Farrar, 452. 


Fate, 235. 

Faut, 146. 

Federal theology, 304-5. 

Feeling, 274. 

Filioque, 124, 367. 

Finitude, 192. 

Fisher, 166, 167, 170, 364. 

Flesh, 109, 256, 313, 345, 427. 

Foakes-Jackson, 30. 

Forbes, 323. 

Force, 235. 

Foreknowledge, 240, 246. 

Foreordination, 240. 

Forgiveness, 162, 176, 179, 198, 200, 
220, 308, 328, 419. 

Formula of Concord, 141, 143. 

Forsyth, 190. 

Fourth Gospel, 27, 28, 92, 98, 111, 
185, 206, 254, 349, 427, 435, 
467. 

Franks, 108, 152, 155, 164. 

Fraser, 280. 


GALLOWAY, 3. 
Gentile, 154, 182, 318, 363, 375, 
878, 395, 421. 
Gethsemane, 84, 103, 119, 180, 179, 
199, 204, 218, 294, 420. 
Giessen, 141, 146. 
Gnosticism, 96. 
God— 
Absoluteness, 193, 221, 245, 470. 
Aseity, 245. 
Constancy, 251. 
Eternity, 17, 245. 
Fatherhood, 18, 20, 54, 206, 225, 
230, 242, 271, 283, 325, 339. 
Holiness, 211, 227. 
Honour, 157, 166. 
Immanence, 14, 118, 184, 186, 195, 


486 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


God—continued. 

212, 221, 246, 261j4254,"272, 
348, 372, 469, 474. 

Immensity, 225. 

Impassibility, 42, 228. 

Infinitude, 17, 191, 193, 221, 245, 
470. 

Knowledge, 191. 

Limitation, 190, 235, 272. 

Love, 104, 159, 160, 169, 178, 195, 
211, 225, 227, 2380, 469. 

Nature, 15, 133, 182, 183, 220, 
232, 236, 332, 473. 

Omnipotence, 18, 139, 223, 231, 
233, 240, 242, 246, 289, 312, 
340. 

Omnipresence, 18, 138, 246. 

Omniscience, 18, 36, 189, 246, 364. 

Passibility, 185, 228, 468. 

Perfection, 228, 234, 242. 

Proseity, 245. 

Righteousness, 104, 166, 169, 211, 
212, 229. 

Transcendence, 14, 118, 186, 195, 
221, 245, 272, 348, 372, 474. 

Wrath, 87, 104, 106, 107, 172, 
LR 2O5 S210. 2 

Gore, 383. 

Gospel, 1387, 528, 391. 

Government, 250. 

Grace, 7, 32, 62, 101, 104, 137, 159, 
166, 180, 212, 216, 225, 229, 
310, 381, 436. 

Gray, 286. 

Greek, 121, 247, 325, 367, 422. 

Gregory (Nazianzum), 155, 366. 

Gregory (Nyssa), 155, 366. 

Grotius, 170-171. 

Guilt, 197, 298, 305. 


Hapsit, 197, 200, 300. 

Hall, 310. 

Halliday, 10. 

Hamilton, 4, 64. 

Happiness, 235, 275, 436, 454. 

Harnack, 30, 55, 65, 66, 70, 117, 
126, 364, 384, 

Harvey, 189. 

Hatch, 385. 

Headlam, 30, 75. 

Hebrew, 198, 318, 322, 324, 325. 

Hebrews, 119. 

Hegel, 17, 246, 321, 474. 

Heredity, 46, 52, 261, 267, 292, 306. 

Herrmann, 16. 

Heurtley, 125, 185. 

Hinduism, 270. 


History, 15, 17, 129, 187, 191, 214, 





217, 223, 237, 239, 251, 258, 
284, 302, 306, 309, 321, 329, 
332, 346. 

Hobbes, 477. 

Holiness, 421, 435. 

Homoousion, 130, 144, 468. 

Hope, 224, 343, 373, 396, 425. 

Hort, 385. 

Hiigel (von), 11. 

Hulsius, 145. 

Humility, 415. 

Huxley, 287. 

Hypostasis, 134-135. 


Inrauism, 274. 

Ideals, 11, 13, 193, 223, 233, 
280, 283, 426, 455. 

Ignatius, 364, 402. 

Ignorance, 176. 

Illumination, 347, 351, 356. 

Immortality, 89, 256, 278, 280, 440. 

Imputation, 165, 167, 178, 304. 

Incarnation, 20, 33, 47, 100, 
141, 145, 150, 156, 161, 
185, 194, 246, 253, 254, 
3387, 371, 412, 469. 

Independency, 376, 386. 

Indeterminism, 265. 

Individualism, 279, 305, 
477. 

Individuality, 261, 264, 289, 306. 

Inerrancy, 331. 

Infallibility, 331. 


270, 


120, 
184, 
270, 


336, 439, 


| Inge, 11. 


Inheritance, 261, 263, 299, 306, 307. 
Insignificance, 233, 255, 282. 
Inspiration, 329, 383, 385. 

Instincts, 263, 272, 307. 
Intercommunion, 400. 

Interest, 242. 

Interim Ethics, 66. 

Intermediate state, 449. 

Irenaeus, 123, 154, 365, 462. 
Irving, 173. 


James (W.), 268, 310. 

Jeremiah, 305, 379, 439. 

Jevons (T. B.), 281, 319. 3 

Jew, 96, 154, 182, 318, 324, 363, 
375, 378, 395. 

John (Damascus), 126, 145, 194, 367. 

Jones (Rufus), 11. 

Jones (W. T.), 12. 

Judaisers, 216. 

Judas, 40, 413. 

Judgment, 10, 199, 201, 208, 217, 
225, 294, 448, 456. 

Justice, 421-3. 


INDEX 


Justification, 164, 168, 180, 229, 
305, 355, 357. 
Justin Martyr, 365. 


Kant, 266, 273, 277, 323, 464. 

Karma, 270. 

Kathenotheism, 318. 

Kenosis, 20, 100, 103, 122, 133, 141, 
146, 149, 190, 246, 247, 249, 470. 

Kingdom of God, 65, 171, 177, 222, 
277, 312, 344, 382, 406, 434. 

Kingdom of Sin, 309. 

Knox, 388, 400. 

Koinonia, 377, 467. 

Kropotkin, 283. 

Krypsis, 141. 


Lagpour, 1, 425. 

Lake (K.), 30. 

Laotsze, 60. 

Latin, 367. 

Law, 109, 137, 151, 166, 175, 198, 
216, 228, 328, 378, 390, 407, 412, 
419, 

Leontius, 126, 145, 194. 

Lessing, 17. 

Liberty, 198, 241, 265, 277, 311, 312, 
384. 

Life, 248, 267. 

Lightfoot, 158, 385. 

Lilley, 15. 

Lodge, 268. 

Logos, 56, 111, 116, 117, 140, 141, 
145-8, 157, 184, 194, 254, 3382, 
348, 368, 371. 

Loisy, 15, 28, 65, 441. 

Loofs, 134. 

Lotze, 193, 221, 272, 278. 

Love, 279, 354, 373, 390, 417, 435, 
475. 

Luke, 2, 9. 

Lutheranism, 94, 136, 141, 146, 167, 
169, 170, 305, 388, 397, 407. 


Macauray, 176. 
Macedonius, 124, 366. 
M‘Giffert, 24. 
Macintyre, 461. 
M‘Iver, 279, 478. 
Mackenzie, 478. 
Mackintosh (H. R.), 8, 124, 176. 
Mackintosh (R.), 305. 
M‘Laren, 226, 450. 
Magic, 351, 393. 
Man, 249. 

Mansel, 464. 

Marcian, 154. 

Mark, 29. 








A487 


Marrett, 345. 
Marriage, 424. 
Martensen, 449. 
Martineau, 287. 
Mason, 376. 
Materialism, 89. 


| Matter, 248. 


Matthew, 29. 

Mediation, 184, 471. 

Melanchthon, 166. 

Meliorism, 236. 

Mendel, 262. 

Menken, 173. 

Merit, 157, 160, 162, 164. 

Metaphysics, 266, 391, 476. 

Meyer, 158. 

Mill (J. S.), 238. 

Milton, 258. 

Mind, 248. 

Ministry, 389, 401. 

Miracle, 9, 19, 21, 69, 
353. 

Modalism, 130. 

Modernism, 14, 219. 

Moffatt, 29, 54. 

Mohammed, 57, 390. 

Monarchy, 318, 367. 

Monism, 269. 

Monogamy, 279. 

Monolatry, 318. 

Monophysitism, 125, 182, 135, 138, 
145, 

Monotheism, 44, 154, 217, 318, 326, 
345, 462. 

Monotheletism, 126. 

Montanism, 368. 

Moore, 319. 

Morality, 3, 152, 163, 187, 195, 228, 
233, 247, 259, 276, 279, 298, 
312, 320, 322, 415, 428. 

Morgan, 97. 

Morison, 369. 

Mozley, 152. 

Muirhead, 265. 

Miller, 268. 

Myers, 260. 

Mystery, 18, 290, 398. 

Mysticism, 11, 20, 95, 160, 178, 188, 
213, 282, 316, 361, 391, 471. 


251, 326, 351, 


Nature, 7, 17, 187, 214, 222, 2265, 
263, 289, 319, 346. 


| Neo-Platonism, 95. 


Nestorius, 125, 128, 129, 133-5, 145, 
185. 

Nicaea, 123. 

Nicene Creed, 123, 128, 135, 366. 

Nirvana, 270. 


488 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Nonconformity, 403, 417. 
Nurture, 264, 309. 


Ossectivity, 465, 471. 
Occultatio, 145. 
Oltramare, 153. 

Oman, 433. 

Ontological, 370, 462. 
Optimism, 236, 288, 456. 
Ordination, 402, 405. 
Organisation, 383, 385. 
Origen, 154, 267, 268, 365. 
Orr, 23, 47. 

Ottley, 124. 

Ousia, 130, 135. 


Pain, 233, 285, 337. 

Pajon, 369. 

Panpsychism, 248, 458. : 

Pantheism, 14, 185, 318. 

Parasites, 190. 

Parenthood, 424. 

Patripassianism, 185. 

Paul, 29, 37, 62, 88, 90, 98, 151, 160, 
167, 204, 218, 236, 243, 274, 
293, 303, 319, 324, 351, 417, 428, 
443, 460, 467, 480. 

Peake, 4, 153. 

Pelagian, 432. 

Penitential system, 160, 166. 

Pentecost, 92, 349, 376, 387, 482, 
471, 

Perfection, 369, 407, 480, 447. 

Person, 194, 360, 373, 475. 

Personality, 7, 18, 129, 170, 183, 188, 
192, 214, 227, 231, 246, 249, 261, 
265, 272, 290, 329, 337, 421, 
469, 474, 476. 

Pessimism, 236, 314. 

Peter, 30, 79, 414. 

Peter (Lombard), 155. 

Pharisees, 61, 151, 411, 416, 428, 
440, 454. 

Philo, 84117, 184. 

Philosophy, 8-15, 21, 129, 183, 192, 
220, 233, 268, 282, 464. 

Photius, 367. 

Physics, 132, 248. 

Physiology, 248, 266. 

Plato, 70, 184, 379, 421. 

Platonists (Cambridge), 436. 

Plerosis, 104, 190, 246, 249, 470. 

Pneumatic, 429, 457. 

Polydaemonism, 318. 

Polytheism, 130, 154, 318, 326. 

Pragmatism, 13, 466. 

Prayer, 416. 

Preaching, 389-92. 








Predestination, 305. 

Prediction, 40, 327, 350, 355. 

Pre-existence, 267, 270. 

Presbyterian, 386. 

Primitive man, 253, 258. 

Probation, 455. 

Procession, 366-367. 

Progress, 3, 186, 193, 214, 234, 248, 
257, 283, 288, 292, 310, 315, 
317, 323, 421, 456, 466. 

Prophecy, 45, 216, 326, 442. 

Prophet, 5, 41, 217, 250, 322, 324, 
347. 

Propitiation, 105, 212. 

Proseity, 245. 

Prosopon, 134. 

Protestant, 122, 384, 385. 

Providence, 23, 217, 225, 250, 289, 
321, 326, 417, 446. 


| Psychic, 428-429. 
Psychology, 3, 172, 182, 192, 227, 


240, 248, 256, 267, 268, 808, 
317, 352, 355, 370, 424, 465. 
Punishment, 159, 162, 164, 175, 179, 
200, 204, 230, 299, 304, 308, 

449, 


(JuAKERS, 369. 


RaBBINISM, 39, 93, 351. 

Ransom, 83, 108, 158, 204. 

Rashdall, 3. 

Reason, 232, 238, 250, 259, 272, 273, 
308, 332, 390, 453. 

Recapitulation, 306. 

Reconciliation, 107, 173, 179. 

Redemption, 26, 108, 129, 133, 172, 
196, 238, 247, 252, 282, 310, 
313, 328, 339, 446. 

Rees (T.), 342, 346, 361, 369. 

Reformation, 25, 164, 173, 368-70, 
382, 406. 

Reformed Christology, 136. 

Regeneration, 396, 427. 

Religion, 2, 12, 15, 152, 185, 187, 
193, 195, 220, 228, 238, 246, 
9247, 259, 279, 281, 298, 428. 


| Repentance, 172, 174, 175, 179, 203, 


208, 223, 
419. 
Reprobation, 288. 
Resurrection, 129, 1388, 256, 440, 
428, 454. 
Revelation, 5, 22, 24, 129, 182, 196, 
217, 220, 223, 230, 247, 252, 282. 
Revival, 92, 329, 351, 390, 432. 
Ritschl, 10, 148, 173, 176-8, 180, 
210, 309, 417. 


281, 308, 334, 412, 


— ees es ee DL St 


INDEX 


Robinson (H. W.), 256, 322, 346. 
Rousseau, 477. 

Ruskin, 436. 

Ryle, 71. 


SABELLIANISM, 134, 143. 

Sacrament, 166, 180, 305, 387, 393. 

Sacramentarian, 150, 391, 399. 

Sacrifice, 83, 106, 151, 162-8, 202, 
337, 420. 

Sanctification, 168,173, 213,347, 351, 
354, 357, 369, 427, 430. 

Sanday, 4, 29, 30. 

Satan. See Devil. 

Satisfaction, 158, 160, 164, 171. 

Savage, 258, 263, 281, 288, 306, 
308. 

Schleiermacher, 172, 174, 178. 

Schneckenburger, 144. 

Schultz, 202, 348, 440. 

Schweitzer, 65, 441. 

Science, 1, 5,7, 17, 21, 244, 252, 282, 
306, 332, 452. 

Scott (E. T.), 117, 359, 363. 
Scriptures, 137, 182, 216, 232, 236, 
238, 290, 306, 343, 368, 416. 

Second Adventism, 339, 364. 

Servant, 79-82. 

Sex, 279, 305, 379. 

Shakespeare, 199, 321. 

Sibree, 321. 

Simpson, J. G,, 347. 

Simpson, J. Y., 249, 288, 310, 455. 

Simpson, P. C., 138. 

Sin, 39, 157, 173, 176, 195, 196, 225, 
229, 283, 285, 292, 297, 309, 
412, 

Slavery, 379. 

Smith (G. A.), 4. 

Smith (W. R.), 4. 

Society, 1, 276, 278, 289, 291, 307, 
323, 410, 424, 476. 

Socinianism, 136, 170, 178. 

Sociology, 370, 424, 476. 

Socrates, 8, 322, 421. 

Sohm, 376. 

Son of Man, 78. 

Sonship, 226, 271. 

Soothill, 488. 

Soul, 256, 266, 345. 

Spencer (H.), 189, 468, 477. 

Spinoza, 234. 

Spirit, 256, 346. 

Spirit, Holy, 90, 109, 112, 114, 144, 
179, 188, 198, 218, 214, 241, 
317, 326, 329, 339, 342. 

Spiritualism, 452, 458. 

Spurgeon, 237. 








489 


Stanton, 29-30. 
Sublimation, 308. 
Substance, 132, 185, 476. 
Substitution, 110, 164, 167, 171, 178, 
205. 
Suffering, 286-97. 
Suggestion, 71. 
Supererogation, 159-60. 
Supernatural, 9, 19, 347. 
Swinburne, 459. 
Synopties, 29, 445. 


TANSLEY, 248, 272. 

Temperance, 421, 422. 

Temptation, 36, 198, 206, 228. 

Tennant, 46, 299, 300, 303, 308. 

Tennyson, 270. 

Teratism, 345. 

Tertullian, 267, 365, 429. 

Theism, 183, 251, 321, 465. 

Theology, 244, 252, 266. 

Therapeutics, 70. 

Tholuck, 56. 

Thomson (J. A.), 255, 259, 262, 269, 
272, 279, 306, 310. 


| Time, 253. 


Tongues, 353. 

Tradition, 38. 

Traducianism, 267. 

Transubstantiation, 397. 

Trinity, 118, 116, 126, 185, 148, 
147, 148, 194, 247, 343, 349, 
361, 365, 368, 462. 

Tritheism, 117, 361, 367, 468. 

Truth, 274, 381, 435. 

Tubingen school, 141. 


Uzgiquirty, 138. 

Ulimann, 47. 

Unity, 261, 400, 472. 

Universalism, 2389, 
451. 

Universe, 233, 246, 283. 


DAS S18 ala: 


Vatue, 9, 187, 227, 233, 280, 315, 
330, 415, 453, 473. 


| Variation, 260. 





Verbal inspiration, 331. 
Vice, 196, 198, 297, 388. 
Virgin Mother, 365. 
Virtue, 388. 

Vocation, 176, 


Wawuace, 257. 
Ward, 189, 248. 
Weismann, 262. 


490 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 





Weiss, 153. | Worship, 390. 

Wells, 14, 188, 235. Wright (W. K.), 3, 18, 465. 
Wendt, 62. 

Wesley, 94, 369. YezErR, 301, 304. 

Westcott, 107, 459. 

White (E.), 450. ZANCHIUS, 145. 

Wisdom, 117, 348, 421. Zoroastrianism, 38, 390. 
Wordsworth, 269, 320. Zwingli, 137. 


Genesis— 


Exodus 
XIV. 
XV1.. 
xx. 5-6 





XYXVill, 3. . 


_ Numbers— 


rag thts ae 


xxiv. 2 


Deuteronomy— 


xxi. 23 


xxvii. 26. 
xxxiv. 9 . 


Joshua— 
od dl 
Judges— 
vi. 34 
xiv. 6 
1 Samuel— 
xvi. 14 
xix. 20 
1 Kings— 
vi. 6 


Nehemiah— 


ix. 30 


Psalms— 
- 
vi. 5 
Vill. 


er 10511 
XVii. 14-15 
<Vill'oo . 


xX1X 


ix hG: . 
xxy. 14 


IN 


DEX 


(b) SCRIPTURE PASSAGES 


PAGE | 


255 
346 
279 
255 
345 


279 | 
347 | 


327 | 
327 | 


262 
347 


9 
347 


103 
103 
347 


327 


347 | 


347 


347 
347 


10 
347 


336 

439 
4) 283 
316, 489 
386, 439 
. 828 

283 


319 | 
296 | 


¢:@ 1A vey: 
sxe 0 
Hert 

He? ; 
Ixxiii. 23-26 


CX. © 

= 
cxxx,. /-8 
OXSXLX. 7 


| Ecclesiastes— 
vili. 15 
Isaiah— 
vi. 1 
vi. 9 
vil. 14 
NVI LUO, 
xxvill. 13 
XxvVili, 21 
xxxH, 15 
ee ee 
Sha 
Xi : 
xl. 1-47. 
xlili. 3 
xliv. 3 
xlviii. 22. 
itive 
liii. 3-4 
liii. 4-6 
liii. 10 
liii. 11 
Hilece 
liii. 7-8 
hx 21 
rahe! 
xii. 5 


| Jeremiah— 
Xx xhce ts 
Xxxill. 31-34 
Ezekiel— 
ees 


hod 


xviii, 2 





| Psalms— continued. 
317, 347, 356 


lxxxviili. 10-12. 


_ 62, 83, 106 


64, 81, 347 


230, 336 
489, 453 


80, 340 
MG 
81 
347 


81 


Un aee 
. 44, 83 


347 
336 
491 


492 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


Daniel— 
Vil, 13414 


xii. 2-5 


Hosea— 
Oa Ba | 


Joel— 

ii, 28 
Amos— 

lity 7 
Jonah— 

Luke 
Micah— 

vil. 18 
Zechariah— 

vil. 12 

ix. 9 

xii. 10 
Ecclesiasticus— 

ii, 23-31. 

viii. 9-20, 

xii. 11 

xy. 14 

sg € ba Ary 

xxv. 24 

> IR | 


4 Ezra— 
Hiro -ee 
Vie 26 
Vili. 46-49 
Matthew— 
ins 
i. 38 
ii. 15 ; 
MoiGela 3, 
iii, 13-17. 
iii, 14-15. 
iv. I-11 
Va 2 
iv. 5-7 
8-11 
LBATG. 











Matthew—continued. 


vill. 17 
vill. 32. 
x. 19-31. 
x. 20 ; 
x. 29-30 . 
xi. 6 t 
xi. 25-30. 
xi, 25-27 ; 
X1.t27 : 
xi. 28-30 . 
xi. 29-30 . 
xil. 18-21 
et Re aN 
xil, 39-4] 
xii. 39 
<ili.. : 
xiii, 31-33 
xili. 45-46 
xiv; 13-21 
ZIVi2Z6. 
xiv. 28-32 
XV. 32-39 
xvi. 4 
xvi. 16 
VIO T ahs 
xvi. 18-23 
Vi, Von. 
xvi. 21-28 
xvi, 23-25 
xvi. 25-26 
Xvii. 26-27 
XvVil. 27 
XVili. 1-6. 
XVlii. 3 
xvili. 21-35 
7 oa: Se 
xix. 13-15 
xix. 20 
xx. 28 


pd Bee On Be he 
xxi. 5 ' 
xxl. 39-41 


X€vil. 3-10 
xxvii. 46. 


XXvilil. 18-20 


PAGE 


eg ey, 
54, 225, 467 
42, 416 

68, 436 

81 

349 

38 

353 

Se a: 
67, 228, 407 
Neer bt 


Aes 
279, 455 
101 


222 


- 50, 82, 108, 204, 


305, 424 
44,77, 78 

it eae 

Epesigeal tes 

. 48, 65 

225 

436 

225 
Mra 
. 44, 50, 204 
34, 87, 42, 84, 
218, 416 

i. deere 
34, 207, 218 
24, 338, 364, 
387, 407, 443, 
445 


il. 17 


li. 18-22 . 


iil. 5 
iii. 29 


WF41-12.. 


v. 138 
vi. 6 


Wi 82-44 
PEAD-AD. 


vil. 15 


vii. 27-29 
vill. 1-9 . 


viii. 21 
viil. 31 
vill. 33 


ix. 23-29. 


ix. 31 


ie AQESS 


x,.18 


ee aati 


xi. 13-21 
xi. 14 
xil. 9 


xii. 18-27 


xii. 24-26 
<3, 27 


xii, 29-31 
xiii. 30-32 


xiv. 27 
xiv. 62 
xu 17 
xv. 28 
xv. 31 


Luke— 


ii. 49 


Pe heal. 


iv. 14 
iv. 22 
v. 1-11 
vii. 37-38 
vii. 36-50 


ix. 10-17. 


x: 14 


x. 21-23 . 


xi. 29 


xi, 31-35. 


xii. 19 
xli. 32 


Kui. 4-6. 
xili. 6-9 . 


xv. 


INDEX 


PAGE 


; 81 
59, 232 
59 

42 

50 

; 303 
52, 61, 81 
42 


225, 230 


418 


2, 50, 64, 221, 225 
. 38 

82 

295 

250 

285 

. 70 

64, 228, 316 


Luke—continued. 
xv. 1-10. 


xvil. 21 


xix. 1-10. 


xix, 41 
xxii. 37 


xxii. 61-62 
Xxill. 34. 
xxili. 46. 
sxive Gb . 
xxiv. 49 . 


| John— 








i, 1-4 
i 5 
Py 
7 be 
i 
i 
i 


ii. 1-1] 
il. 4 

ii. 2 
ili. 1-6 
iu. 3-5 
ii. 15 


vi. 38-50. 
vi. 45-51. 
vi. 51-57 . 
vi. 58-62 . 


vi. 64 
vi. 68 


vil. 37-38 


viii. 12 


4.98 


PAGE 


218, 460 
441 


50, 112, 445 


115, 443 
75 

115 

112 


55, 114 


112, 285, 295 


114, 457 
112 

112 

54 

54 

42 

73 
72, 73 


494 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


John—continued. 


Xv i. 32 


xvi. 5 
xvii. 1] 
KV 22-20 
SVile cas 
xix. 28 
xx. 


#41-8 : 


Acts— 
i. 3-5 
li. 1-13 
li4 to 
ii. 38 3 
11. 40-42 
ili. 6 
hd 
viii. 14-17 
ix. 1-9 
x. 46 
xi. 15 
xiv. 11 
xiv, L5-1'7 
xVe 
xvi.15 . 
Xvi. 382-34 
XVi1,,/ 22-31 
Xvii. 28 
eh PP ALE 
xix. 5 
xix. 6 

Romans— 
l. 3-4 
alo 
pe be: , 
i. 18-23 
li. 14-16 . 


PAGE 


Bo ip Bs ' 
ae 88 





88, 349, 441 


113, 116, 350 
. 116, 350 
350, 436 

55, 221 

112, 381, 392 


116, 350 
5, 63, 339 


‘55; 115 


55, 116 


88, 349 


350, 351 


188, 249, 271, 316 


95, 97, 98, 101 





PAGE 
Romans—continued. 
iii. 23 eS 
ili, 25 105, 201, 230 
ili. 26 94, 104 
Hila, Ae ee iy 
v. 1-4 107, 109 
ge he 302, 304 
v. 20 101 
V.408 : ar a fb. 
vi. 1-14 . 339, 355, 356, 358, 417 
Vin gesth ls ; 294, 455 
vil, 7-25 . 109, 198, 308, 428 
Vill : 201 
Ville) Pals 107 
viii. 9-11. 307, 360, 430 
Willi Los say 247, 
‘vill. 17 453 
vill. 19 338 
viii, 24 ei 426 
vill. 28 109, 204 
Vill. 37 243] 
Viil. 38-39 109, 176 
ix. 1-29 ; 239 
ix. 3 238, 251, 460 
25 : 98 
ix. 18 251 
iXc 240 
ix. 80 239 
XilZ-1s 358 
Kc21 239 
x1. 1:31 239 
xi. 26 460 
Sees 107 
FI. 2 451 
xii. 356, 379 
Tiles 416 
we thei OW 416 
sab hte ee 416 
MUISR Le 228, 356, 430 
1 Corinthians— 

“17 388 
i. 24 391 
Hi. 23 98 
vi. 11 357 
vi. 14 98 
Vili. 6 98 
ix. 16 403 
ib aps 5 422 
x, 22 ; 358 
5 Oa A EY, : : ay 
pa urls . 44, 82, 
xi. 29 : te 
xii 354, 357, 381 
xii. 26 3 s 461 
xii. 30 13) (Spee 
xii. 31 "92, 379, 418 


INDEX 


PAGE 


1 Corinthians—continued. 


xiii. 
xiii. 1 
S14 12 
XIV. 


xiv. 14-17 


xiv. 25 


XIV. 34-86 
xy: 1-34. 


sy 18 
xv. 28 


xv, 42-49 


Virol 
xv. 56 


xvi. 23-24 
2 Corinthians— 


ae 
i, 22 
ili. 5 


iii. 17-18 


iv. 5 
Vv. 


vii. 9-10 . 


Vili. 4 
vill. 9 
Daa ee | 


xii. 9-10. 


xili, 14 
Galatians— 
ii. 20 
lil. 3 
iii, 20 
lil. 28 
iv. 4 
v. 6 


Misaerce. 


Ephesians— 
i. 14 


iso 
i. 22-23 . 


li, 11-22 . 


ii, 18 


” 353 


449 


. 98, 450, 460, 480 


97, 428, 441, 


414 
97, 213, 357, 
429, 454 


2 108 
"424 


214, 431 


24, 97, 357, 467 


94, 358, 417 
102 


343 
446 


91, 190, 338, 381, 


437, 451 
379 
357 





Ephesians—continued. 
li. 20-22 . 


iva 
5b yf | 


v. 22-23 
te ete 


21 
i 1-11 
ie7, 
li. 9-1] 


4219-13 


ia) 
ili, 12 


ili. 20-21 . 


V7 

iv. 8 

iv. 13 
Colossians— 


ee =F bras 
Pib-16.), 
i 19620 1% 


i, 24 
Eee, 
Lig 
ii. 15 


1 Thessalonians— 


Vue 


2 Thessalonians— 


ili. 18 
1 Timothy— 
ish 


asia 


vi. 20 

2 Timothy— 
iil. 15-17 
iv. 6-8 


Hebrews— 


Vil. | 25-26 
xi) 


xi, 39-40. 


xii. 1-3 


. 52, 84, 338 


495 


PAGE 


338, 357 
447 
415 
379 


358, 417 


19, 51, 117, 140, 146 


148, 190 
24, 97, 98 
427 

206 

. 299 
97, 444 
436 

411, 436 
204, 431 


99 
ee 
98, 452 

103 

9”) 


97, 411 
108, 153 


332 
444 


317, 426 
99 


49, 293 

36 
. 294 
102, 293 


. 88, 34, ie 


85 


84, 195, 298 


304 


. 20, 48, 213 


11, 414 
460 


35, 42, 88, 420, 
436, 456, 459 


496 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE GODHEAD 


PAGE PAGE 

James— 1 John—continued. 
wil] : ; ; oA be boy © rues . é ine Le 
Vind -oh ; ' ‘ 418 
LiPeter~~ iv, 10-21 o>. 
il. 19 : 4 , : 450 vy. 4 : : / ; 431 

iv. 6 : : é : 450 : 
Revelation— 

1 John— v. 6 ] ; : ; 335 
i, 7-9 } : , 113 vi'9-10 ‘ F : 243 
7% ae : 113 v. 12-14 . : , é 3385 


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